


Broken

by letthesongtakeflight



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, F/M, Gen, I have no idea where I'm going with this, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers (2012), Slight OOC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-02-13 17:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 39,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2158854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letthesongtakeflight/pseuds/letthesongtakeflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when two broken people bond over insomnia, nightmares, and alcohol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be a short piece but it kind of ran away with me. There aren't enough fics of these two out there, and I hope that I did the characters justice.
> 
> I obviously don't own anything recognizable.

Ten minutes past two on a Thursday night, a month after the battle of New York, and Natasha couldn't sleep. Lately, her unconscious hours were filled with Loki, with literally drowning in the blood of those she's killed. But she won't admit that to anyone; even Clint, as much as she trusted him, wouldn't be able to understand the darkness in her. His hands were bloodstained too, but not as much as hers. Nowhere near as much as hers.

That was why she found herself leaving her room in Stark Tower and taking the elevator to the bar at the top floor, where Stark's booze supply was always well stocked. To her surprise, the billionaire himself was sitting at the island, a glass of liquor in hand. She wordlessly plopped herself down on a barstool on the opposite side of the island; just as silently, he offered her a generously filled glass, which she drained. He refilled it.

"What're you doing up?" Despite the half empty bottle sitting on the island, testament to how much he'd drunk already, his words were not slurred, and the chocolate brown eyes regarding her were clearly sober. 

She considered lying or deflecting the question with a snarky comment. She didn't usually have qualms about it; after all, she was a spy, and a good one at that. Lies and deflection were the bread and butter of her trade, and on several occasions her life had depended on her ability to lie. But she wanted to be as honest as she can with the Avengers, especially to Tony. She knew that he didn't trust her; hadn't trusted her since her deception as Natalie Rushman two years ago. After being thrown into a team together, his distrust had lessened, but it was a safe bet that out of all the Avengers, she was the one he trusted the least.

Maybe it was because she wanted that to change, or because of the surreal feeling from the late hour, or simply because she was mentally exhausted, but she didn't want to lie anymore. So she said, "Couldn't sleep."

"So you decided to raid my booze?"

"More or less." She shrugged. "Problem?"

A half-hearted smile grew on his face, a shadow of his usual cocky smirk. This was a Tony Stark weary of keeping up appearances. "No, but I'm not carrying you back to your room if you pass out."

"Fair enough, but I'm not dragging you back to your room either," she replied. "I'll leave you here for the rest of the team to find you in the morning."

The smirk widened, more closely resembling his usual grin now. "You underestimate me, Romanoff. Do you actually think that I'm going down before you?"

She gestured at the bottle, which was almost empty by now. "You had a head start."

The corners of his lips fell and he fixed her in an intense stare. "Let's see about that," he challenged. 

Two hours and half a dozen drinks later, a tipsy Tony and Natasha were still sitting at the island. Tony was recounting how he and James Rhodes tried sneaking into the girls' dorm when they were at boarding school together. Natasha was listening with her head propped up with one hand, elbow on the table. 

"And right when Rhodey was stuck in the window, those girls came up behind him and –" Before dissolving in laughter, Tony managed to gasp, "He fell down from the second-floor with his pants still down!" Tony was all but rolling on the floor, and it appeared inevitable from the way he was perched precariously on the stool. The story wasn't all that funny, but Tony's boisterousness, coupled with the alcohol, made Natasha relaxed enough – drunk enough she reminded herself – to allow herself to laugh. 

Miraculously, Tony did not fall off the stool, but recovered enough to prompt Natasha. "Your turn, Tzarina."

"'Tzarina'?" She cocked an eyebrow incredulously. "Are you serious?"

He grinned, dark eyes gleaming playfully. "Weren't you a Russian princess?"

"Don't make assumptions, it just makes you look stupid.” Her warning was more teasing than serious.

"But were you a princess?" Tony seemed genuinely interested.

Natasha paused, debating how much she was comfortable with telling him. "Who or what I was doesn't matter. I'm Natasha Romanoff now."

Tony nodded in understanding. She wanted to create a new identity, be someone who isn't tied defined by her past. He'd been there, he knew that feeling better than most people realized.

"Fury didn't approve of me choosing an alias so similar to my birth name," Natasha continued. "But I did it anyway. I don't want to completely disengage myself with the person I used to be. It's not someone I'm proud of being, obviously, but at the same time..." She trailed off, the words for explanation failing to come to her.

"You don't want to forget how your past has made you into who you are now," Tony finished for her.

"Exactly."

"But if Fury didn't like your new name, why did you stick with it?" he pressed. "I thought you lived for orders."

A spark of defiance rose in Natasha' gaze. "I don't question them; that doesn't mean I can't make decisions for myself. I don't think Fury has a say over something as personal as my name."

"Does it ever bother you, though?" Tony said. "That you have to listen to Fury? Not question orders?"

She considered this for a moment. "A little," she admitted at last. "But sometimes the alternative is worse."

He leaned forward, elbows resting on the surface, brown eyes intense despite the copious amount of alcohol already in his system. "If you, or Hawkboy, or any other agent, had confronted Fury about what was really going on with the Tesseract, everything might have turned out differently. No Loki, no battle, none of that crap."

"Maybe," she said. "You think of that a lot?"

"Yeah, you know I have a thing with orders." The seriousness disappeared from his eyes and he leaned back, taking a long drink from his glass.

"No, about the battle, Loki, all that,” she amended, genuinely wanting to know. 

"Yeah," he said frankly. "Don't you?"

She looked away, reluctant to admit weakness but even more unwilling to lie to Tony. "Yeah," she whispered. She met his eyes briefly before looking away again, unable to let him see the weakness in them. Sincerity had torn down all her walls, and she knew that he recognised the vulnerability in her. The same look was in his eyes – unguarded, vulnerable – and she knew that he understood completely because he felt it too. 

"Good to know you don't live and breathe for Fury's orders. Remind me to call you next time I hack into SHIELD." Tony grinned and the mood lightened immediately, the vulnerability dissipating. He got up and stumbled to the elevator, leaving Natasha to finish her drink. Watching the elevator doors close upon him, Natasha had a feeling that sleep would come easier and more peacefully tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

The nightmares struck mostly when Pepper was out of town, because Tony slept better when someone was next to him. But even then, there were times when Pepper's warm presence wasn't enough to quell the nightmares. Incoherent mixtures of Afghanistan, New York, Vanko, Loki. The Avengers missing, Rhodey tortured, Pepper killed. One terrifying image followed by another.

His ingenious solution, as with so many other problems, was to get drunk. Sometimes Natasha would already be at the bar when he went there in the middle of the night, sometimes she would join him. Despite never acknowledging it to the other, they both knew that the other's dreams were as troubled as their own. It was written in the lines of their drawn faces, dark circles under their eyes, a flash of an unguarded, haunted expression that briefly appeared before features were schooled into nonchalance or arrogance.

Excepting that, they were honest with each other. Somehow it was easier to take let their guard down in the dead of the night under the muted lights of the bar, when it seemed that they were the only creatures left in the world. Tony learned early on that Natasha would retreat immediately into her shell when he brushed on sensitive topics. He, too, used sarcasm and snark to evade talking about things he didn't want to.

So he stayed in the safe waters. It was an utter relief to open up to someone who didn't only listen, but also understood. He liked to think that he was the same to Natasha – someone she could talk to, someone she could trust, someone she to whom she could expose her insecurities. He knew that she was close with Barton, closer than Tony himself could ever be to her, but given that the archer was about as open with his emotions as Natasha, she probably didn't pour her heart and soul out to him. Tony liked that he was the only one who had seen the infamous Black Widow with her walls down and masks removed.

Tonight, though, he could sense that something was different. Natasha was perched on her usual seat, glaring at the amber liquid in the glass in front of her. This was not out of the ordinary, but there was an aura of – something, he wasn't sure what – that was different.

He eased himself into the seat opposite her. Her eyes darted to his briefly, but she didn't say anything. He debated internally whether he should ignore the unspoken taboo of nightmares – rules were for breaking, after all. But he didn't want to press too much and fracture the fragile relationship they had. So he stayed silent, waiting for her to talk if she wanted to, or to silently drink into oblivion with her if that was what she needed.

Natasha seemed the prefer the latter, at least until three glasses later, when she growled, "Dammit Stark, don't you have something stronger than this?"

"Please tell me that was rhetorical; don't you know me at all?" He took out a bottle of vodka. "This good enough?"

"Perfect."

"Very Russian of you." As he poured their drinks, he couldn't help adding, "Tzarina."

Ignoring the comment, Natasha downed her shot and gestured for another.

"Not a bartender," Tony muttered, though he obliged. At the redhead's continued silence, he quieted and returned to his own drink.

"Bad one?" Natasha asked softly. Pepper was in town; usually Tony wouldn't turn to alcohol to drown out the nightmares.

Tony was mildly surprised that she chose to breach the topic, but he merely shrugged in reply. "Pepper kicked me out of the room. I woke her after I –" he broke off, offering his attention to the glass in front of him.

"You had a nightmare." Natasha finished for him in the same quiet voice.

Tony nodded, still avoiding Natasha's piercing eyes. It was good to get that out in the open, even though he knew that she knew anyway. "So did you."

She made an affirmative noise, waiting for him to continue.

"Wanna talk about it?" He could feel himself crossing some invisible border, plummeting down in a free fall in the dark. They never talked about something so personal, let alone something that made them vulnerable. They both hated appearing weak. He wondered how she would react to his suggestion. She might talk about it, or she could retreat so deep into herself that he could never coax her out again. Inexplicably, the notion that he will never see this side of the assassin again awoke some sad, remorseful feeling in him.

Fortunately, she chose the former. "How about we swap?" Natasha raised her gaze to his over the top of her glass. "You first."

"Fine." He agreed lightly, hiding his relief and also his trepidation at voicing his deepest fears. "It doesn't make much sense. Have you ever noticed that when you try to remember a dream, it never does?"

"Yeah. Like a piece is missing."

"Exactly," Tony says. "Anyway, I started remembering it right in the middle of a battle. I think it was New York, I mean it was in New York, and we were fighting the Chitauri, but I'm not sure if it was the battle couple of months ago? So yeah, I was holding off this entire army, and I was –" His head sank into his hands, sucking in air through his teeth. He let out in a shaky breath. "I've never felt so overwhelmed before. They were coming from all around me, practically materializing out of the air. Then it was like I'm watching from the outside, looking at them surround me. And then I saw – it wasn't me in the middle of the army, it was Pepper, and I tried to get in to her, to get her out of there, but I was falling, through the portal and I tried flying, but I couldn't fly faster than the fall..." Tony slapped his palms against his forehead in frustration, a sound akin to a sob wrenching from his throat as his breathing turns into gasping.

"Tony. Tony." Natasha tok his hands to stop him from hitting himself. She rarely sought physical contact that wasn't of a violent nature, and she knew next to nothing about comfort. But it was tearing her up to see Tony in such a desperate state. She cared about him, as a teammate, as a friend, even. She cupped his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. "Breathe, Tony."

He nodded, taking deep breaths through his mouth. Slowly, his shaking subsided and his hysteria faded. "That's it," she said soothingly. "It was a nightmare. The battle's over. You made it out of the portal in time. You blew up the Chitauri. That's what's real. Hold on to that, not the nightmares, not the... non-real memories."

Tony forced himself to meet Natasha's gaze. Quietly, he said, "Was that what you did after they brainwashed you?"

It's almost as if he pushed a big red button. One moment her face was a breath away from him, her serene and composed air calming him. The next she was on the other side of the island, standing to her full height, flaring up with anger. For a second, Tony believed that she was about to pull out a gun and shoot him. "How did you know that?" the Black Widow snarled, "Have you been in my file?"

"Chill, I'm the only one who's read it. No one else can hack into SHIELD." Despite his shock, Tony couldn't resist bragging.

Natasha calmed, but only by a fraction. She sat back down on her stool. "Talk, Stark," she said harshly. "How and why."

Tony decided that despite all his self-hatred, he was rather attached to life and wasn't in a hurry to die, especially not because of some dumb, impulsive question. So, he answered in seriousness. "I like to know who I work with. SHIELD gave me some intel on each Avenger, but no details. Steve, Bruce, Thor... there's info on why they're an Avenger, who they were before, how they became a 'superhero'," Tony put air quotes around the word, "Even Arrow Man had a couple of sentences on him. You – nothing on your past. So I hacked into SHIELD, looked up your file."

Natasha nodded once, her face settling into impassive coldness once again. Tony wished that she would crack that surface a little – figuratively speaking of course – and let him see what was inside her. He once told her that he couldn't get a read on her. Back then she was under cover, but even now when he knew her – her real identity, what she did, even who she was before she became Natasha Romanoff – he still couldn't read her like he read other women. She was an enigma.

"How much do you know?" Natasha's voice was cold. This was an interrogation.

"As much as SHIELD does," he answered. "They don't have much detail, though. Well, there's no shortage of info on your missions; how much time do you put into your reports?" He digressed. "Anyway, they've tracked your career from KGB onwards. But before that, there's hardly anything. A basic outline. Like I said, no details."

Natasha nodded imperceptibly, almost to herself. A flash of emotion – perhaps relief? – flashed across her face before Tony could recognise it and then she put up that blank wall again. "Good," she said, a little less severely.

Tony gave her a half-smile that lacked his trademark confidence, but was warm and sincere. She did not return the gesture, but her expression softened as she returns to her drink. They lapsed into silence for several minutes before Tony spoke. "So, are we still on for the deal? I tell you mine, you tell me yours?" He was prepared for her to say no, especially after he his intrusion upon the privacy she was so fiercely protective of.

"Might as well," Natasha said grudgingly; she may not have been enthusiastic, but she agreed and Tony took that as a positive sign. "This dream is one I've had again and again, and every time I get hit the same way," she began, her voice steady and devoid of emotion. "It was in the Red Room, when I was still being trained, I thought myself to be in love with one of my trainers." She scoffed with disdain at her former foolishness. "I was young – a teenager – and I had not yet learned that love always ends up hurting you. He knew what I felt, used that to his advantage. The dream always ends in the same way – me finding out about his betrayal and confronting him, and he tells me that he never – that he had been using me all along. But tonight, he turned into Loki." Her voice wavered and Tony recognised that the dam inside her was straining from holding back her emotions, but she kept going. "And he says to me what he said in the helicarrier, about the red in my ledger, about lying and killing for my existence, about killing me and Clint –" she broke off abruptly, her breathing becoming uneven as she fought to rein in her emotions.

"Hey, it's okay." Tony put an arm across her shoulders, pulling her close, and they both leaned across the island. Natasha's hands were fisted into Tony's shirt. He had his arms cradling her, one hand rubbing comforting circles. Their roles were reversed now; it was Tony comforting a hyperventilating Natasha, when not so long ago she was there for his panic attack.

They stayed in that position for a long time; it wasn't comfortable, they were both half out of their seats to reach each other across the island, but neither one moved from the strange embrace. Natasha calmed down quicker than Tony did; he wondered how many times she had woken from a nightmare with only herself for comfort. He suspected that the number was far too high.

When she was calm and her breathing even, he murmured against her hair, "Your nightmare is a memory, isn't it?" She was silent; Tony wondered whether he should interpret it as a wordless confirmation.

"Those are the worst kind," she finally said. "Because you don't know whether it is real or not."

"Even if it is, it's in the past," he said. "It doesn't define who you are now."

Natasha released him from their awkward tangle and returned to her own seat. The island was suddenly too wide, an intrusive barrier between them. "Maybe it does," she said quietly. "I don't try to pretend that the past didn't happen, that I'm not affected by what I have done." She looked straight at Tony, and once again he had the feeling that she was staring into his soul. "You know what I mean?"

This was the man who was once dubbed the Merchant of Death. There was as much blood on his hands as Natasha's, maybe even more. He understood what it was like to struggle to stay afloat in an ocean of blood. He knew the toll that had on one's conscience. "Yeah," he answered softly. His eyes met hers. No emotionless facades, no sarcastic airs. Without the walls that constantly surround them, they may as well have been completely naked. An unspoken infinity of understanding passes between them.

Natasha was the first to move. She broke eye contact, turning back to her drink and draining the remainder of it in a single gulp. "We should go back to bed."

"You have a bed to go back to, I get the couch." Tony deadpanned.

Natasha gave him a genuine half-smile that brought warmth to her usually cold eyes. She stood up, and before going back to her room, she said lightly, "Enjoy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A surprising number of people have read and liked this. Thank you so much. Especially to InnerCinema, who deserves a (hundred) hug(s).


	3. Chapter 3

 

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked as she entered, because something was obviously wrong. Tony was slumped at the bar, elbows on the island, head between his hands, and the way his hair stuck up in angles was evidence that he's been tearing his hands through it. A glass and a half-empty bottle of scotch were on the island. A nightmare, no matter how realistic or horrifying, could not possibly account for the utter defeat and hopelessness.

"Pepper left."

Natasha did not say "I'm so sorry"; she knew that they were meaningless and useless, and apologising, especially for something she had no control over, was not something she did. She sat down on the stool next to him. "Did you expect it?" Because if he didn't then he was a lot more oblivious than she gave him credit for.

Tony hesitated before nodding grudgingly. "We've been fighting, a lot, about everything." She knew this; for all the privacy of separate floors, they lived in the same tower and besides, noticing these things were second nature to her.

She poured them both drinks; he downed his in one go and she drank hers too, albeit with less enthusiasm. She refilled their glasses. "Is there anything you can do to fix it?"

He shook his head and sighed. "I tried everything. Buying her stuff, taking her places, letting her make decisions – I even blew up all my suits for her." It came out as a choked sob. There was something unsettling about seeing Tony Stark so broken and defeated, and something deep inside her, what fragments were left of her humanity, ached to soothe him.

"Was that was it was all about? You blew them up for Pepper?" she murmured. When he came back from Malibu a few months ago with no suits, the team had been surprised, but he had been prickly about the subject. Natasha had seen a slightly forlorn look in his eyes when he talked about them; she knew how much they meant to him, how much a part of him they were. They were, in his own words, a "high-tech prosthetic", and to destroy them was akin to giving up some bodily function, to become crippled and immobile. For a man who valued his privacy and freedom so much, this was the greatest sacrifice.

"I wanted to show her that she meant more than them. That she was the most important thing in – " He rubbed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes and Natasha knew that he was fighting the urge to cry.

She remembered what it feels like to be utterly broken, to have the purpose of your life taken away in the blink of an eye. She's had some not-so-strong moments, dealt with overpowering emotions, and she knew that they have to be dealt with rather than allowed to fester. "Let it out. I won't judge," she encouraged.

Her words seemed to release him, for he began to sob his heart out. She instinctively wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. Jaded as she was, she knew that there was some unexplainable comfort in a hug, in a mere human touch. She did not offer empty reassurances, but told him silently that she will be there for him when he needed her.

"Why did she leave, Tash?" Tony said in between sobs. "Why is everything I do  _not good enough_?"

"It's not your fault," she said firmly. "You did all that you could to salvage the relationship, and no one could have done more in your place."

He pulled back from her embrace, much calmer now. "Then  _why_?" The raw pain was evident in the quiver of his voice and the shine of tears in his eyes.

She smiled wryly. "I know next to nothing about love, Tony. But what I do know is that relationships are messy. You have to give and you have to take. It's compromises and sacrifices and appreciation – and if even one of you can't accept that, then it's gonna fall apart."

"For someone who doesn't know much about love, you give good relationship advice." The look he gave her was more like his old self, though still sad and a long way from alright.

She gave a low laugh. "It's just from experience. At least it explains why my past relationships never worked out."

He fixed her in a knowing stare. "Are you the giver or the taker?"

"I guess that we – me and my exes – were all takers. We're selfish and short-sighted, we wouldn't weather it out when things turned sour."

"And what about me?" He leaned closer, and so did she when she answered, "Giver, as much as you pretend to be a selfish jerk."

He grinned, and she smiled, glad to see him looking more like the Tony she knew – part arrogant playboy and part vulnerable soul.

He caught her by surprise when his mouth crashed onto hers. It was desperate and needy and she found herself kissing him back. She didn't stop to think, only aware that the thought of Pepper wasn't nagging at the back of her mind like a guilty conscience. Tony planted messy kisses along her jaw, travelled down to suck at her neck, and she had no control over the low moan that he elicited from her.

But they were both aware that it's not love. It was comfort, pure and physical, and this was the only way that they knew to satisfy such an intense need. Natasha was all too willing to give what Tony so needed, and maybe she needed what he had to offer too, more than she had previously realised. It had been too long since she sought physical release, and with Tony it was somehow physical and emotional all at once.

They managed to make it to Tony's floor of the tower before stripping the clothes off each other. It was not a slow or romantic or thoughtful affair, but a mad, frenzied one. They ended up tumbling onto the couch, taking each other as though the world would end if they did not. And when they were both sated, they fell asleep, naked bodies tangling on the too-small surface, finally at peace from the nightmares of wakefulness and sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are actual people reading this. Brain. Cannot. Compute.


	4. Chapter 4

They tried to act like it didn't happen, that they never slept together. They tried to return to their old, comfortable habit of meeting at the bar on the top floor of the tower for drinks and late night talks. But one night, after a particularly bad nightmare, Natasha kissed Tony and the request in that was clear enough that he took her to his room.

After that, they ended up in his bed, or at least his floor, more often that not.

They sometimes fell asleep together, but there was never any cuddling or sweet whispers. They were both too independent, too stubborn, to admit their need for emotional comfort and attachment.

Natasha always woke first, and she would dress quietly, go back to her room and carry on with her day. Most of the time Tony would still be asleep, and on the few occasions that he's awake, he would pretend to be asleep, and would never stop her from leaving.

This became part of their ritual, an established pattern. Despite his break up with Pepper, Tony did not resort to his old womanizing habits, nor did Natasha go to strangers for sexual release. They would go to each other, and they would satisfy each other. It was simple. Clean. No strings attached.

There was a tacit agreement that it will always be like this. In front of the other Avengers or SHIELD agents, they were friends, close friends even. But they never gave a hint that there was more to their relationship than that. It was for pure, physical need and comfort, and it always works better when it's with someone with whom you can let your guard down.

But this constancy was shattered when Natasha's past was released for the world to know. She returned from DC in the wake of the collapse of SHIELD and the exposed gory of her past.

The tower was empty, save for Tony. The rest of the Avrngers were all scattered around the globe, weathering out SHIELD's collapse: Bruce was in Africa, Thor was in Asgard, Steve was God-knows-where looking for the Winter Soldier, and Clint was staying in Greece where he had been on a mission.

Natasha was on her floor of the tower — and she considered the tower "home" despite living there for only a couple of months — when Jarvis said, "Ms Romanoff, Mr Stark would like to invite you for a drink with him tonight."

She was surprised by the formality of the invitation. Tony Stark didn't invite girls to places, he told them where to meet him and they were all too willing to come, even when they knew that he would use them and dump them. To invite her this way, giving her the choice to reply or even decline, was significant in some way she could not yet recognize. "Alright, let him know I'll be there at midnight." It was earlier than their usual time, but she reckoned it would be easier than stumbling out of bed at three in the morning.

When she arrived at the top floor of the tower at midnight, Tony was already there. He gestured for her to take a seat at the bar, where he mixed a drink for her before taking the stool next to hers, and she asked, "What's this?"

"I've been experimenting since everyone left. This is one of the milder ones, I don't want us to get drunk just yet." His tone was light, but she sensed a deeper meaning behind it.

"Have you named them?" she asked, referring to the drinks.

He shook his head. "No, I wanted to name one badasstini, but... nah."

She smirked. "Good call. That sounds like something I should definitely avoid."

"There's one that's called the Widow's Bite."

"Ouch." She wondered whether she is its namesake, but refrained herself from asking. It would be presumptuous, she told herself.

He tried to smile, but it didn't touch his eyes. Natasha looked away and took an experimental sip. It's good, sweeter than what she's used to and somewhat fruity, and the alcohol, unmistakable on her taste buds, was just strong enough to leave a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Silence fell, broken only by the sound of their breathing, the occasional clink of the glass on the table, and the minute sounds Tony made when he fidgeted in his seat. The air was charged, though with what Natasha didn't know, and she was slightly worried that their moment will be ruined.

"How are you, Tash?" Tony asked softly.

She met his gaze and her walls came falling down. The thoughts she had kept voiceless and hidden now tumbled out. "Not as great as I'd like to be. My cover's blown, the world knows who I am now. Who I was, what I've done, all those dark secrets I tried so hard to bury are exposed and they will never be forgotten. When I joined SHIELD all those years ago, it was to start off on a blank slate, do good to outweigh the bad I've done. But now SHIELD's gone, and I'm back at square one – no job, no purpose, and a ledger dripping with blood. And to know that the cause I've served all these years is not as worthy as I thought, that it's as dirty as the masters I escaped from – that brings all the progress I've made crashing down."

"No, it hasn't," he said. "You once told me that you don't follow orders without question. What you have done is just that – you follow orders, but you think them through, and you go rogue when you need to. You didn't do what SHIELD ordered you to, you did what was right, and that's why you've come so far from the person you were."

"Do you really think that I can be more than how SHIELD saw me? More than how the world, now, sees me?"  _Can you wipe out that much red?_

"Yes." The single word was filled with conviction. She gave him a small, sad smile. She wished she could share his optimism.

After another long silence, Natasha said, "You remember how I told you once that I don't do whatever Fury tells me to?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "First time we did this." He gestured at the drinks on the table.

"Yeah." She found herself smiling a little forlornly. "Well, I guess that a part of me is relieved that I don't have to take orders anymore, not from Fury, not from anyone. I've spent so much of my life following orders, doing other people's dirty work; I've never lived without waiting for my phone to ring and an order to fly me off to the middle of nowhere for some mission. It's actually daunting that there isn't a next mission, that this is it, that SHIELD doesn't have any control over me anymore." She let out a nervous little laugh.

"So what are you gonna do now?" Tony asked.

"I'm flying out in a couple of days. I'll be in Eastern Europe, hiding out for a while like Clint is until this whole thing blows over. I'll get a new identity, make a new cover. Maybe I'll freelance again?" She smiled, bittersweet.

"Will you come back?" It sounded almost like a plea, and despite her rational judgement, her heart tugged traitorously.

"I don't know. When I'm needed."

"You could stay," he blurted out. She looked at him in naked surprise.

"Why?" Her voice was a whisper, and she fought to suppress the hope that swelled in her chest and lit up her eyes.

There was no pretense in his open and vulnerable expression as he said, "I need you."

She closed her eyes to suppress the pricking behind them, and to conceal the longing that she knew must be naked in her gaze. Tony Stark begging her to stay was breaking what's left of her heart, but she couldn't do this to him – couldn't drag him into this mess she's in, muddy his name by hers, destroy the progress he's made through association with her. She was a pragmatist, a survivor. She's always done what she must do to survive, even if it meant breaking her own heart and his in the process. She should walk away from this and start afresh.

But maybe Tony could be her fresh start. She's never planned on leaving forever, not when she knew that she will eventually be needed and she will come back to save the world. So maybe, they could do good together, help each other, because he was the only one she's connected with like this, the only one who understood that struggle for penance. And she was the only one who really understood him, the obsession, the nightmares, the guilt, because she's been there before, and in a way still was there.

They had both spent too long hiding behind masks, covering their vulnerabilities up with cockiness and nonchalance; cold-heartedness and indifference. Maybe it was time to remove them and step into the light. And maybe, they could do it together.

So when she said, "I need you too," her meaning was transparent, the vulnerability obvious, and without asking, he knew.

Tony curled his fingers below Natasha's jaw and angled her face to kiss her. It was as unlike their previous rough, artless kisses as possible; it was soft and loving and tender, as though they were afraid of breaking the fragile agreement between them, as though they could not bear to be anything but careful. This kiss – gentle, unfamiliar, but pleasant – seemed to herald a new beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, the lovely Innercinema who inspired me so much with writing this pairing and continuing this story. All you readers, check out her work here on AO3.


	5. Chapter 5

In the weeks following the beginning of their relationship, Natasha and Tony had the tower to themselves, with the rest of the Avengers still scattered across the globe. They took advantage of the privacy to accustom to their new closeness. Natasha was pleasantly surprised when she found out how tactile Tony was; he would put his arm around her or take her hand or simply lean against her whenever they were occupying the same space. For someone so unused to physical contact, she found it endearing and comforting, and became more assertive in physically touching him, often curling up against him on the couch.  
  
Tony discovered that Natasha sang in Russian when she thought no one was listening. He loved how her smoky tones carried the foreign syllables, and after he told her so, she became less shy about it and would sing even when he was listening.  
  
Natasha found that she liked wearing Tony's worn, stretched t-shirts, and he found that she looked better in them than in anything else.  
  
Occasionally, Tony surprised Natasha in bed with breakfast, but more often than not she would be up hours before him, and when he woke she would already be showering after a session at the gym, and if that's the case he joined her. But more and more frequently, she would lie in bed after waking, sometimes waking Tony too, others daydreaming until he woke.  
  
Gradually, Natasha's belongings migrated into Tony's floor. It began with essentials like her toothbrush, then her iPod and fat books of Russian literature. Tony found that the space in his closet was reorganised – or rather, _became_  organised, as it hadn't been organised to start with – to make space for her clothes. She'd claimed one side of the bed as her own, her territory marked by the phone charger permanently plugged into the nearest socket and a book on the bedside table.  
  
It had been two weeks since their relationship began, and this sheer domesticity was something that both of them had once found unbearable. But now, in the face of the chaos of SHIELD's collapse and the inevitable, if not imminent, return of their teammates, it seemed like a holiday.  
  
One evening when Natasha walked into the living room, Tony was sitting with his back to her. She was about to call his name when she heard a voice that was definitely not his or Jarvis's. Her senses were on full alert at once. She angled herself to peer into the room without being seen, and found that it was empty. Tony replied, and taking a few steps into the room, she saw the tablet in his hands and Bruce's pixelated face on the screen.  
  
"Hey," she said, coming up from behind Tony and touching his shoulder.  
  
He looked up at her in surprise. "Oh, hey Tash" he said, and Bruce waved at her from the screen.  
  
"Hey Bruce, what's up?" she said, sitting down next to Tony, deliberately avoiding physical contact with him. Tony shot her a look, which she ignored.  
  
"Tony was telling me what happened with SHIELD," Bruce replied, oblivious to the couple's behaviour. "I guess I don't have anyone keeping tabs on me anymore, right?"  
  
" _I'm_  keeping tabs on you." Tony pointed out. Natasha and Bruce laughed, and she had to fight the urge to lean in to him.  
  
"Strangely, I'm okay with that," Bruce said. "Do you guys need me to come back to New York? See how things are going and deal with whatever you need me to?"  
  
"Probably not a great idea," Natasha said. "We're all celebrities now, so it's best to stay off grid for a while, until this whole thing dies down."  
  
"Or until you need me to smash things up again, right?" The doctor joked with a self-deprecating smile.  
  
"Or that." Tony grinned. "Keep those muscles fit, big guy."  
  
"Hopefully we won't need you to do that anytime soon." Natasha added.  
  
Bruce laughed, then asked in seriousness, "Natasha, if staying away is the best move, why haven't _you_  left yet?"  
  
She froze; she sensed Tony stiffen next to her. "I..." Her eyes flickered from Bruce's face to Tony's. His expression was tense, the lines around his mouth hard and he resolutely kept his gaze away from her. On one hand she wanted to tell Bruce; she knew how hard it was for Tony to not let his friend know. But she couldn't so blatantly ignore her instinct for self-preservation when this information could so easily mean hurting herself or Tony, not even when she rationally knew that Bruce would never use that against them.  
  
She answered, "I guess I've been persuaded that the world will fall if I'm not around."  
  
"Uh huh..." Bruce said, confused. "Anyways, I'm going to be here for a while, so..."  
  
"We'll keep in touch, buddy," Tony said before hanging up. He set the tablet down on the coffee table and when he turned to face Natasha, his expression was serious. "Look, I know we haven't talked about whether we want them to know about us –"  
  
"Are you mad that I didn't tell Bruce?" Natasha snapped, immediately defensive. "I know you've always had your entire life laid out in front of the public, but I haven't, and –"  
  
"Bruce isn't the public." He interrupted forcefully. "He's our _friend_."  
  
"I know! What I mean is that it's so difficult for me to tell people about my private life, because more often that not it's come back to bite me in the ass and in that moment I just let my instincts take over and not tell him, because now it's not only my life I'm risking but yours too." She stopped her rant in agitation, discomfited that she had showed so much of herself in an outburst.  
  
Tony's expression softened. "I know you don't think so, but I get it. I've lived my life in public, yes, but I do try to protect those I love from that, especially now when it could mean putting them – putting you – in danger."  
  
"Thank you." She sighed. "And about telling the team – just give me a little while to get used to this, to us, before we tell them. I promise that we will, eventually, just not right now."  
  
He nodded and, taking her hand, kissed it. "Okay. We'll tell them when you're ready, and not a moment before that."  
  
She smiled forlornly. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess."  
  
"Hush," he told her, pulling her into a tight hug.   
  
She wrapped her arms around him and said, "So we're good?" to which he replied, "Yeah." In that moment, she knew that staying was a risk worth taking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for not updating more. Life is crazy, school is crazy, and sadly those things have a slightly higher priority in my life than fanfiction, however much I love writing more.


	6. Chapter 6

Natasha ducked the left hook and barely dodged the kick. She feigned a blow to the head, her opponent moved to block it, she swung instead at his gut and caught him off guard. She took advantage of his surprise to follow with a kick but he managed to dodge it and she lost balance for a moment before turning to face him again.

They circled each other for a moment, each waiting for the other to strike first. He moved first and she sidestepped his blow, hooked her leg behind his in the same movement and pulled him down. He fell but grabbed her leg and pulled her down with him. She tried to pull herself free but his grip was firm. She kicked again, harder, and he let go. She tried to get up but he dragged her to the floor again and she fell on her back. Before she could get up he was kneeling over her and raining blows down on her. She put her arms up the block the tirade of punches. When there was a pause she flipped her legs up, trapped his throat between her thighs and pinned him down.

"You got me," Steve Rogers panted. Natasha freed him and got up, offering a hand to pull him up, which he took. "That was a good round."

"Come on, you were going easy on me – again," Natasha pointed out.

He at least had the decency to look abashed. "You knew?"

"Of course. No way I could've freed my leg that easily if you'd been using your full strength," she said, raising an eyebrow. "And you gave me a moment to recover when I stumbled."

"I don't want to hurt you," he said sincerely, eyebrows slanting upwards in that adorably lost and helpless expression. "I'm stronger than you are."

She rolled her eyes. "I've dealt with lots of guys stronger than me, I'll be fine." She picked up the water bottle and towel on the bench next to the training area and moved towards the lifts.

He gave a light chuckle behind her. "You're always so sure of yourself."

"If I weren't I'd probably be dead," she deadpanned as she got into the elevator. "See you tomorrow, Steve."

She hit the button for Tony's floor. Her muscles were sore in the way they only were after a good workout. But despite the physical satisfaction of it, there was the ever-present frustration that Steve was holding back. Despite his enhancements and superior strength, she knew she could match him in combat with her skills and dexterity. But she would never get to find out because he was going easy on her.

After months of tracking the Winter Soldier, a disheartened Steve had returned to New York with Sam Wilson. The trail had gone cold, and even Steve had to admit that there was nothing more they could do. So, they settled back into the Avengers Tower to take a much needed break.

With Steve and Sam's arrival, the bubble that Tony and Natasha had been living in burst, reminding them that the past month was only a holiday from their usual openness Natasha had gained in the last weeks disappeared, instead once again donning the mask of indifference, which she only removed when she was alone with Tony.

Tony was just waking up when she got out of the shower wrapped in a towel. "Hey," he said, his voice husky with sleep.

"Hey." Natasha gave him a quick smile. She grabbed underwear from the closet and with her back to Tony, let the towel drop. She was putting on her underwear when he came up to her from behind. His hands rested at her hips, barely touching her, then ghosted over to the front of her waist and settling there. His firm chest was against her bare back. She could smell him, the masculine scent that she had come to recognize as safety and home. He pushed her damp hair over her shoulder to press a lingering kiss to her neck and she sighed, leaning into his touch.

He brought a hand up to caress her face with the back of his fingers, tracing down her cheek to take her chin in his calloused palm. He ran his thumb along her lips and he whispered again, "Hey."

Natasha took his hand in her own, turned around, and kissed him softly. "Hey," she said as she pulled away, and Tony rested his forehead against hers. He stayed in that position for a while, uncharacteristically still. "You okay?" Natasha asked, eyebrows pulling down in the middle of her forehead.

"Yeah," he replied softly. "Just missed you. Where were you?"

"Training with Steve, like I do most mornings." Natasha answered with trepidation. There was a strange look of dejection and sadness on Tony's face. Something was off, though she couldn't put her finger on it she could sense it. "Babe, what's the matter?"

"Nothing. Nothing's the matter," he said offhandedly with forced casualness. He let go of her and turned away to get dressed.

The thought clicked in Natasha's mind, and she could hardly believe that it was true when she asked, "Tony – you're not jealous, are you?"

He paused, then said a suspiciously guilty, "No."

"Oh, Tony." Natasha stepped towards him, laying a hand on his shoulder. She wanted desperately to reassure him that his fears were unfounded, but she did not know how to do so. She could tell him that Steve was a good training partner; that all they did was train; that they were no more than friends; that she would never cheat on Tony. But all she could do was say, "Don't be."

"Come on," Tony said with a dark chuckle. "He's like the embodiment of sexiness. He's kind and sweet and brave and heroic and all those things girls like. He's Captain freaking America for God's sake." His voice lowered as he added, "You two look great together."

"Tony," Natasha cupped his face in her hand, turning him to face her. "Yeah, he's all those things. But he's not my type."

"And what is your type?" Tony's lips barely moved.

A faint smile played on Natasha's lips. "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropists."

"Well, there aren't that many of those guys around," Tony deadpanned.

"No, there really aren't," she said. "Let me know if you see any around."

"Hmm," he murmured, rubbing his nose against hers. He wanted nothing more than to tell her he loved her, but he somehow couldn't. Those three little syllables were stuck behind his teeth and he couldn't get them out. She deserved more than being told like this; she deserved a romantic occasion with dinner and wine and dancing and a heartfelt confession. "Let's go out for dinner."

"Do you mean... just us?"

"Just us, we can make it a date." He could envision it in his head: fancy restaurant, both of them dressed up, and over wine or champagne he would take her hand and tell her exactly how much she meant to him, how she charmed him and will always charm him, and finally tell her that he loved her.

But Natasha was skeptical. "We'll be seen. We haven't even told the team yet, let alone the public."

He waved away her worries. "If they ask, I'll say it's a friendly outing. I'm allowed to have dinner with my beautiful teammate, aren't I?"

"Yeah, but..." Natasha bit her lip indecisively, then relented. "Okay. I guess you're right." If Tony wanted it so much, she supposed that she could compromise. When Tony grinned and kissed her quickly in response, she hoped that she wouldn't regret this.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with this story. This chapter is pretty closely tied up to the next one, which is probably the longest chapter so far.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony Stark never did things by half. When Natasha stepped out onto the street at seven, a limo was already waiting for her. The driver opened the door for her, and Tony was sitting in the back, wearing a perfectly pressed dark grey suit. "You look nice," she said when she got in.

"So do you." Tony took her hand and gave it a light squeeze. "I like your..." he made a vague gesture with his hand. "Dress, shoes, hair..."

She laughed, the sound melodic and captivating. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

He laughed, too, a deep rich chuckled. "No, I don't," he agreed. "But at least I know what I'm looking at, and you are gorgeous." Unlike other men who admired her looks, there was no flattery or lust in his voice; he was simply complimenting her on her beauty. She wondered whether he knew how rare he was; despite his cynical and snarky attitude, he was still surprising her with moments of unguarded sincerity and innocence.

They pulled up to the restaurant, a fancy and expensive place. Tony had made reservations, and they were shown to a table at the back of the dimly lit shop, where a candle burned on the table. Natasha was incredibly aware of how the other patrons' eyes darted to them every so often, obviously curious about Tony Stark and the now-infamous Natasha Romanoff. The attention made her uncomfortable; the semi-darkness and stuffiness, combined with the eyes that never seemed to leave them, made her spy instincts kick in immediately. She tried to ignore them and act naturally with Tony, but she couldn't, not when her senses were all on high alert.

As though to compensate for her quietness, Tony talked at a spit-fire rate. Natasha made neutral, non-commental responses; she was very aware of eyes and ears that were tuned in to them, and she didn't feel safe enough to let any part of herself show through. But that wasn't the only problem; something about the way Tony was acting pricked at her, her intuition, which she had learned to trust, was telling her that something wasn't right.

When the dishes were cleared and they only had half filled glasses of wine left, she said in quiet seriousness, "Tony, what is tonight about?"

This was his chance. "It's about us," he said, taking her hand in both of his. He had prepared a speech, and he began it. "I used to be a selfish playboy, I treated women like they were my property, I used them once, then I would get bored and dump them. But you've changed me; you're fascinating and capable and so, so beautiful, you are the only woman who can always keep me on my toes. When I first saw you I knew you were the most beautiful woman I would ever meet, and I'd completely underestimated just how important you would be to me."

"What are you trying to say?" Natasha interrupted, forehead wrinkling in uncertainty and confusion.

"I want you to know how special you are, and how much you meant me."

"No," she clarified. "I mean, why do you saying all this? Doing all of this?" She gestured at their table and their surroundings. "I don't need a night out or a cheesy romantic speech; you don't need to tell me all that for me to know. And if you want to do this just because it's a big damn romantic gesture, you should really stop flattering your ego."

"Flattering my – Tash, this is for you." He was taken aback; this wasn't the reaction he'd expected. "I wanted something special for you, and you're gonna bite my head off for that?" His voice rose in volume. This earned him a few tuts and more than a few turned heads.

Natasha glanced at the other patrons, uncomfortable with causing a scene. "That's not the point," she hissed.

"Enlighten me." Tony lowered his voice, but it was just as cold.

"Look, I appreciate everything you're doing –"

"Sure doesn't seem that way."

"But I hate how everything is so artificial. The sincerity and spontaneity and truth in all of this is gone, because it's so rehearsed and planned and – just – fake. I know you, Tony, you're more than just a sarcastic asshole or an attention-hungry narcissist."

"Honey, if you think that this isn't the 'real me' or whatever shit, well, sorry to disappoint." He spread his arms. "You wanted me, you get the whole damn package, narcissist and all."

"Yeah, and it's because you're a narcissist that you wanted to do this tonight. You wanted to show off with some grand romantic gesture, just to stroke your own ego. If you're doing this for me, then you should know that you don't have to prove anything to me."

"That is not it." Tony's voice turned into a dangerous, deep growl. "That is not it at all."

In a quiet voice, she repeated, "You don't have to prove anything."

"I don't have to prove anything?" Tony said. "Or is it because you don't want to prove anything? Am I just a fling for you, like all those other guys?" At Natasha's shocked expression, he continued. "Yeah, I know exactly what you did with them. I was in your file, remember? Every dirty secret of every single mission – i know everything. That billionaire's kid from Turkey? How you played the innocent girlfriend, milked him for information on his dad's company and dumped him when you had what you needed? Or the time you let that mafia boss tie you to the bed and whip you? You had fun, didn't you – maybe a little too much fun and that's why SHIELD pulled you out? Do you want me to go on? I know about –"

"Shut up!" She shouted. All eyes were now fixed on them but she didn't care anymore. Her face and neck were flushed, her eyes green fire. "You have no idea what you're talking about. You know what I did before you and you never had a single fucking problem with it before now. Because being in my fucking file doesn't mean you know  _anything._ "

If Tony was a man with an amount of self-preservation that could be considered healthy, he would have been afraid. He was, however, not known for his caution and he opened his mouth to argue. But Natasha interrupted him. "Can we just go home?" She glared at the curious onlookers; being seen in such a vulnerable situation made her feel compromised.

No, we cannot and we will have this damn conversation right here, Tony wanted to say, but he was clearheaded enough to know that it wasn't a good idea. So he sighed and nodded.

The car ride back to the tower was spent in an icy silence. They sat as far as possible from each other on the seat, neither looking or touching the other. For the first time in a long time, they went back to their own separate floors.

The first thing Tony did was pour a drink. The Scotch burned his throat, matching his frustration and disappointment. The evening was a disaster, it had gone so far from the way he envisioned. He didn't understand why Natasha didn't like the date and what he said. His whole life, he'd used his sweet tongue and cheap romantic tricks to charm women. Even when he'd settled down into a steady relationship, these continued to be reliable as ever. Pepper used to love that kind of thing: fancy restaurants, special occasions, heartfelt speeches. Even with her he did not often show himself, and she loved it when he was sincere, even – or rather, especially – when the words were deliberate and rehearsed.

But Natasha was different; she was different from any other woman he'd ever met. She didn't fall for flattery, didn't care for grand romantic gestures. What really seemed to touch her was when he let her in; not only in the way he was with Pepper, by telling her wholeheartedly how important she was, but in the way of letting her share his secrets and fears, letting her see him when he was weak and in return allowing him in when she was knocked down. She's lived her life finding lies while shrouding herself in them, and so it was truth, however messy or unpleasant, that captivated her. In that moment, he realized why she hated everything he did tonight.

Natasha almost ripped her dress in her haste to yank her heels off. She was slightly more careful with her heavy earrings; her ear lobes were, after all, harder to replace than some cocktail dress. Barefoot, she went back out to her kitchen. It was poorly stocked, even more so these days than it had been before she moved in with Tony, but at least she had a faithful bottle of vodka. How ironic that it was her only constant companion throughout her life, she thought as she drank straight from the bottle.

The gulp seared down her throat and she welcomed it; it seemed to burn away her jumbled emotions and give way to some form of clarity. Natasha had been on edge the whole evening; their date was an unwelcome departure from the usual comfortable relationship they had. She did try her best to enjoy Tony's effort, but his horrible speech was the final straw for her. She didn't know how to explain to him; she didn't even know why exactly she hated it. But something about its artificiality and rehearsedness stood in opposition to the trust and openness their relationship was built on. It hurt that he felt he had to put on a show for her, just to prove a point about himself.

But what hurt most of all were his accusations. She should have known that her past and her work would come up as a barrier between them. After all, that was always the way her relationships ended. She knew that it was difficult for her partners to have to put up with the knowledge of what she did for a living, but she'd expected more from Tony. He had accepted her for what she was, in spite of what she was. But maybe that was an act, too. Maybe she had been deluding herself for the past months. Maybe her expectations were too high, and maybe that was her own fault, because she'd thought that, despite his shortcomings and his way with women, he would care about her enough to see past what she's done. Apparently, she was wrong.

But she knew Tony, and she knew, in her gut, that he hadn't meant those words. He had known that they would hurt; of course he had, that was why he had flung them at her like barbs. And what about what she said? She had called him things that were, while maybe not quite as untrue as his accusations towards her, close enough to sting. It did take two to start a fight, however clichéd that was, and she was aware that she was at fault too. Just like him, she had struck at his vulnerability in her anger.

It must have been the alcohol, or else she was getting soft, but Natasha had half a mind to apologize to Tony in the morning.

Then a knock came from her door. She opened it to find Tony, still in the suit he wore earlier, sans jacket and tie, sleeves rolled halfway up his arms. His hair was mused, as though he had been running his hands through it. They stood there for a moment, neither moving or talking. Tony finally broke the silence. "Let me in?"

Natasha contemplated this for a moment. Then she opened the door wider and stood aside, tilting her had to gesture for him to enter.

He complied, taking a seat on her couch. He gave a ghost of a smirk when he saw the bottle in her hand. "We're more similar than we like to admit, you know that?"

"You want a drink?" Natasha said, offering him the bottle.

He paused, seriously considering it, before shaking his head. "I'd like to do this sober." Or relatively sober, since he'd just had a couple Scotches. He patted the spot next to him, an invitation to sit. Natasha complied, though she kept a safe distance away from him.

"You know why I'm here, what I need to say," he said. Natasha's heart fell. Despite everything she'd expected of him, he really was no different from the other men she'd let into her life. And once again, she was going to get hurt. Maybe it was no more than she deserved. Nevertheless, she shielded her heart with all the pieces of armor she had left and prepared for the impact.

"What I said about you and – and your job, that was uncalled for and I was a complete and utter dick about it. "

Natasha's brow furrowed. "Wait – what?"

Tony leaned forward, looking at her with those soft brown eyes that were, for once, free of all pretense. "What you did with all those guys, that's part of your job. You're a spy, and a damn good one, and I know that means that you've got to use all kinds of unsavory measures. I also know that it is strictly professional and I respect you for it. So I promise you, this isn't going to be a problem between us. I should never have said those things, I didn't mean them, you know that I didn't, I just lost control and –"

"You're not – breaking up with me?"

"What?" A laugh of disbelief left Tony's mouth. "You thought that I was gonna break up with you?"

"You did bring up the whole thing about my job and, yes, I know that you hate that I have to be a slut but –"

"Natasha, you are not a slut." His voice was low and sure, slightly heated by the anger that she had cause to think of herself in that way. "And even if you were, I wouldn't care. I know you, and who you are is a goddamn practical woman who won't let anyone tell you what to do or say. You're a woman who has so much more to her than what I, or anyone else, gives you credit for and no, you are not a slut and I am so sorry that I said that. I will accept any punishment you deem me to deserve."

She couldn't help letting slip a little smile. If he didn't want to break up with her, if he was willing to salvage the pieces of them and rebuild things with what they had left, she would be too. "I guess we both said things tonight that we didn't mean," she said. "I'm sorry, too. I know that you meant well and you really wanted to make this a special evening. I can see why you wanted to do that, because I guess that most girls like that kind of thing, so I do appreciate the effort, really." The words spilled out of her mouth, tripping over each other. "And the things that I said, I meant them about as little as you did when you said those things about me. That doesn't make it okay, that we would hurt each other like that given the incentive, but I'm so sorry, Tony." Her expression was a mixture of apprehension and hope and remorse. "I just want us to  _work_ because – because this is the best thing that I've ever had."

Slowly, as though afraid that she would shrink back or strike him, both were equally likely, he crept his hand closer to hers. She watched him without moving. He laid his hand over hers and gave it an affirmative squeeze. "Me too," he said softly. That was all that was needed. No big romantic gesture, no champagne or fireworks, just those words to let her know that he was in it, for the good and the bad. He found then that the urge to tell her that he loved her disappeared, but contrary to that, his love for her had increased tenfold.

"What you called me back there," he said. "I know you were angry and you don't mean it – but they're true. I'm narcissistic, I like being in the spotlight, and sometimes, like tonight, the stuff I do is more for myself than it is for you. I'm sorry for making it all about me; it'll get better, I promise."

"I chose to be with you, and that includes every part of you," Natasha reassured him. "Narcissist and all." Her gaze clouded over as she said, "Could you do the same for me? I know it's hard with my job and you knowing everything that I've done –"

"Tasha, I knew what I was getting into. Trust me, you are so much more than that." Remorse softened his features once again. "And I really am sorry for using that against you. Never again, I promise you that."

She nodded. "Thank you," she whispered with a sad little smile. She placed a hand on his jaw, and leaned in to kiss him. She might not have the words she needed to say everything she wanted to, and neither did he, so they poured it all into the kiss.  _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._

It was like a rhythm that beat within both of them as they discarded their clothes.  _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_  were the kisses she placed around the arc reactor, above his heart.  _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_  was the way he caressed her breasts with reverence. They were gentle with each other, to the point of surreality, as though they were both afraid of hurting the other more than they already had that evening. As though any hint of roughness could splinter the fragile relationship and break them both forever.

Hours later, when both love and apologies were made, they lay on the couch, Tony spooned around Natasha, sated and content at least for the night. "Did we just have our first fight?" Tony said, wrinkling his nose.

"Yeah, I guess," Natasha answered with a soft laugh.

"How d'you think we did?" His eyes were warm as he looked at his lover in his arms.

She pursed her lips and quirked them to the side. "Could've been worse," she decided.

"Yeah?" He grinned, eyes lighting up with genuine hope.

"Yeah," she repeated in confirmation. "No relationship is perfect, especially with us because we're both so screwed up. Whether it's now or in a couple of years, we'll always be working stuff out with ourselves and with each other. We'll fight – I mean, it's  _us_ , of course we'll fight – but that doesn't mean that our relationship is going down, I think that it can help us get better together."

Tony watched the rare unguardedness of her face as she spoke with conviction. For someone so jaded, she was somehow incredibly optimistic about them, more so than he was. But she was more experienced than he; the only real relationship he'd been in since college was with Pepper, and even after years of being with her he hadn't been able to open up to her as he's already done so with Natasha. There was no pretense between them, and he now knew that he didn't have to agree with her just for the sake of making peace. So he said, in a small voice that he usually drowned out with his bold blabber and alcohol. "But what if we keep making the same mistakes again and again? What if we're so screwed up that we just don't have it in us to be human anymore?"

"That's what I've believed for most of my life after leaving Red Room, that I'm just too broken," she confessed. "And every time I've been in a relationship, this is where I'm reminded of that and I walk away. But not with us." She turned around to look directly at him. "We might be incomplete and damaged, but we're not beyond saving. Our hearts are still ticking, and with that, I know that our humanity isn't lost just yet. Maybe it's forgotten or misplaced, but that doesn't mean we can't find it. We may be broken, but there's enough left to be fixed. And who knows, maybe our pieces will fit together better for all their brokenness."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lateness. It took me a long time to get this chapter just right, I wrote about three or four versions of it. And I have to thank the amazing Inner-Cinema, who is beta-ing this story (and a couple of WIPs I'm working on). I seriously could not write so much without you.  
> Also, I'm sorry about the length of this one, it's nearly three times as long as the other chapters.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: the beginning of this chapter is rated M for graphic sexual content (they make out)

The air was heated, charged with the sounds of moans and sighs both pleasured and impatient. Natasha's mouth was hot and wet on his as she pinned him against the wall. His hands crept beneath her tank top, feeling the smooth expanse of her stomach and tracing the rough scar on her hip. As he toyed with the waistband of her panties her hands cradled his head possessively and held him tighter to her, fingers raking through his curls.

His lips moved down her throat, leaving kisses and bites on her tender skin. She braced herself against the wall, hands on either side of his head. He sucked at her jumping pulse point and she said his name in a breathless moan that sent more blood rushing down to his nether regions. He was full of her scent in his nose, her skin between his lips and teeth, and her flaming hair a curtain in front of his eyes. He drew back to pull her tank top off completely and –

 _Briiiinngggg_! Her phone rang shrilly.

"Dammit." Natasha started to pull away.

"Ignore it." Tony grabbed her wrists to draw her closer. He kissed her on the lips but she pushed him off.

"That's my work phone, it's important."

"Why do you still have that on?" he said irritably. Since SHIELD's collapse he didn't see how she needed to. And now it was interrupted their make-out session.

She sent him a glare as she answered the phone. "Romanoff." Tony threw his hands up in frustration and marched out of the room.

She bit her lip as she watched him leave. But this was her job, and she's always been a SHIELD agent first and lover second. But then again, she's never been loyal to SHIELD as an organization, only to what she could do through it.

Coulson's voice drew her back to the present. "Agent Romanoff?"

"Yes sir." She knew that he was alive, both her and Clint; they were Level 7 and were told soon after the Battle of New York.

"We want you and Barton to come in."

"Sir, he's not back yet." Clint never came back from his mission in Greece. He'd made contact with Natasha after SHIELD fell to let her know he was safe but that he would be stay undercover there to hide out until it was safe to come back to the US.

"I know, I've contacted him and I'm sure he'll be back soon," the Director said.

"I'll talk to him before promising anything, you know that."

She could hear his wry smile. "I know; you two have always been a package since he brought you back from Romania."

She allowed herself a little smile.

Coulson continued, "I'd like for you two to join SHIELD, I need all the agents I can trust right now and you know that's few enough. And the Avengers, too, if you can get them on board."

A familiar sense of foreboding pricked at her gut. "I'll get back to you soon, Coulson," she said before hitting the end call button on her phone. She looked up to see Tony leaning against the doorframe. Her heart sunk to her stomach like an anchor.

"Coulson, huh." His voice was cold, his eyes black voids.

She sighed, a heavy weight on her chest. "I know I should've told you – "

"Should've told me?" He laughed bitterly. "Oh, no, keep SHIELD's precious secrets for them even though they're gone. You didn't have to tell me that a man I cared about is fucking alive!"

She took a step towards him and shoved him. "You promised! That my job would never get between us again!" She could feel the heat creeping up her throat to her cheeks and up the backs of her ears.

"That was before I knew you kept something this big from me! I don't give a fuck about who you've slept with, or who you've killed. I care that Coulson is alive and you knew – you  _knew_  how I took his death. That I saw him as a friend. And you didn't tell me even though you knew –"

"I had my orders. And maybe you're right, maybe I was a piece in their game and I didn't know it and I still don't. But I did what I thought was right so don't fucking blame me for this." She returned his incensed stare with one of determination, cold and proud.

It took a minute for his anger to thaw, but it did, and his stiff posture relaxed. He sat down on a chair at the kitchen table and said, "Now tell me everything."

It took a while but she got it all out eventually – Coulson survived being impaled by Loki, how exactly she wasn't sure; he was now Director of SHIELD and was rebuilding it from the ground up, hand-picking agents he knew he could trust, and he wanted her and Clint back.

Tony took it all well enough, considering that not an hour ago the man was literally dead to him. "So what now? Are you going to join him again? After what SHIELD's done?"

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, a tell-tale sign of her stress. "I don't know. Last time I joined SHIELD I did it because I thought I was doing good, that I was wiping the red from my ledger. But I guess that I did nothing but stain it even more, trading the KGB for HYDRA." She looked at him, anguish in her eyes. "What if this time the same thing happens? So maybe I shouldn't join any organization, maybe that's the only way to be sure that what I'm doing is good."

Tony did not have the words to reassure her, so he simply put his arms around her and pulled her towards him. She was at first unresponsive; but after a moment she melted against his embrace and lay her cheek against his shoulder. "I'm sorry, you know," she said quietly.

"Mm-hmm." He kissed the top of her head. "And forgiven."

She pulled back to look at him. "Why do you –" She cut herself off and looked away before she finished.

"Why would I what?"

"Nothing." She started to stand but he pulled her back down.

"Tash."

She avoided his gaze. "Keep forgiving me. After all the shit I've done."

"Natasha." He cradled her face and she looked up, torment clear in her eyes."It wasn't your fault." Her eyes grew round with surprise. "Not all of it, and I'm willing to bet not most of it. What you did with the KGB, you were raised that way, you didn't know any better. And as for HYDRA, you trusted in SHIELD and my only qualm is that you didn't try to find out what was going on that you didn't know about."

"Doesn't feel that way. Sometimes I still see them, in my nightmares."

"I know." He rubbed his thumb over her cheek. More than once she's cuddled up to him, trembling all over, after a nightmare. "I can't tell you that they'll go away cause mine haven't either, but" – he smiled ruefully – "being with you helps."

"Yeah, well, you help me, too," she admitted. She kissed him on the lips, sweet but quick. "We should tell the team," she said. "About SHIELD, and Coulson. When they all get back here."

"Deal," he said. "But before that – let's continue where we left off earlier." He was grinning as he pulled her in for a deeper kiss. The great weight lifted off her chest as she kissed him back and, as an apology, she let him push her onto the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, but this chapter was a bitch to write. I apologize for the half-ass-edness and the half-ass-edness of the upcoming chapters, too. These are filler chapters so they're super tedious and I apologize for it, but once we get this explanatory stuff out of the way we can move on to the fun stuff.


	9. Chapter 9

Clint returned to New York three days later, his skin in a deep tan and hair golden from the Greek sun. Natasha greeted him with a quick hug; she hadn't seen him since he left for a mission before SHIELD's fall. Out of habit she checked him for wounds and scars; for the years they were all each other had. They endured each other's inspection with little fuss, as they would never tolerate if it were anyone else.

They went for lunch at a cafe in the city, a quiet place they'd known about for years and would visited whenever they were in the city, as their jobs had prevented them from settling anywhere. But now they

"So how was Greece?" Natasha asked him at lunch.

"Great," Clint said. He grimaced as he peeled burnt skin from the back of his neck. "And hot. More great than hot, though," he amended. "Unless you're talking about those Greek girls, who're both. I met this one girl, who does this thing with her tongue –"

"TMI, Barton," Natasha protested, wrinkling her nose.

He laughed. "You should go there sometime, you'll love it."

"What, I'll love the girls?" She raised an eyebrow, grinning.

"Yeah," he said, only half joking. "They're amazing."

"What, you used to be into girls, too. Or has that changed" – he wriggled his eyebrows – "now that you're sleeping with Stark?"

The question caught her off guard; her eyebrows raised by a fraction and her jaw slackened momentarily, before she managed to school her features into an expressionless mask. "Why do you think we're sleeping together?"

He rolled his eyes. "Don't do that to me, Nat, I know when you're lying."

"Do you?" She narrowed her eyes. "Need I remind you that I passed Fury's lie detector and you didn't?"

"Shut up," he said. "I thought you didn't sleep with colleagues."

"I don't," she said. "Stark was never a colleague, he was only a consultant."

"That's a technicality, you're on the same team." Clint brushed it off. "It was pretty obvious last night, when you went to get drinks and he followed you, and you stayed in that bar for way longer than you needed. Then you played footsie for the rest of the night and let him touch you without punching him. I swear, high schoolers are subtler than you too."

She sighed. "Damn, I'm slipping," she muttered to herself. Louder, she said, "Fine, yes, we're sleeping together. So?"

Clint held up his hands."Chill. You can sleep with whoever you want, I've never cared, have I? It's just that you never sleep with anyone from work, not even when Gregson was smitten with you."

"Gregson was looking for something more than what I was ready to give."

"And Stark is just like you, you're not looking for anything more than sex."

"Yeah..." she said, and added quietly, "we're actually something more now."

"What?" He wrinkled his brow. "You're  _dating_  him?!"

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Oh, God." He looked at her in disbelief. "What is that like? I thought you couldn't stand him. He's like the most obnoxious bastard ever – no offense to your taste, Tash."

"Hah. None taken." She relaxed. "And he's not as bad as I thought he was."

"That's probably a compliment," Clint noted and Natasha smirked, raising an eyebrow. "You must be really serious, you  _never_  date." He let out a deep breath. "Wow. Does he know that you're serious?"

"Yeah, he was actually the one who brought up, um,  _dating_." She said the last word as though it tasted foul.

Clint let out a low whistle. "Wow." He looked away, and took a deep breath. "Okay." He was taking this far better than she had imagined; after all he knew Tony's reputation as well as she did, and he had always been warily protective of her from the men she dated. But there was an air of resignation about him as well, as though he was steeling himself against the prospect. Then the moment passed and it was the old familiar Clint looking at her, warm and constant and brotherly. "Tell him that if he hurts you, I'm gonna shove an arrow up his ass."

She laughed in relief, glad that the uncomfortable revelation was over so soon. "Yeah, will do."

They finished their meal, took their coffee with them, and started walking back to Avengers Tower. "Tell me if there are any paps," Natasha said.

"I'd offer to shoot them for you," Clint said, "but then I remember that it's kinda your fault since you dumped those files online. So I'm just gonna grab popcorn and watch."

She shook her head, chuckling. "Asshole."

"Have you thought about what you want to do about your unemployment?" Natasha said after a while.

"I don't know. Coulson's called you?" He looked at her.

"Yeah, I told him I'd talk to you."

"Huh. I told him the same thing," he said wryly.

"I guess we have to talk this over." She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

"You've always been so into work, what's holding you back?"

"Do you ever wonder if we're doing the right thing?" She stopped and looked at him. He tilted his head to the side a little, silently asking her to elaborate. "I mean, we spent so long working for SHIELD and it turned out to be HYDRA. I wonder how much of what I did was actually for, y'know, the good guys."

He looked to some point in the distance, his eyes unfocused. "Yeah, I know. But what's our other option?" Before she could answer he quickly said, "And don't say settle down because we both know that civilian life isn't for us."

She smiled wryly at that. "Yeah, no. But we don't need SHIELD. We can do just as well, maybe even better, by ourselves. I mean, us and the rest of the team. No more following orders, compartmentalization…"

"You never had a problem with that."

"I didn't until I saw what it did. How it tore SHIELD apart. Let HYDRA survive and grow in it. Because no one had the whole picture, no one knew what was going on. We – the Avengers – we're not like that, you know. We'd be… more free, somehow. I mean, I respect Fury as much as you do, but you have to admit that he made pretty problematic decisions as a director. Steve would be a better leader than him."

"Yeah, well… it's Captain America, he's pretty much perfect, right?" Clint joked. More seriously, he said, "How would we do anything? Like, you know, eat?"

"Stark has the funds." She raised an eyebrow, a corner of her mouth threatening to quirk up.

He snorted. "Did you just volunteer your boyfriend?"

"I guess." She failed to hold back the grin. "But we should talk about this with him. And the rest of the team." It was a strange statement to make; not long ago she was making decisions only for herself, with no one else implicated. Then Clint came along and she had to factor him into the equation, too, when she made decisions. Had to think that someone would care if she was blown to smithereens. Now, she had Tony, and the team, to think about, their opinions to consider.

Clint said, "So that's what we want? To not join SHIELD again?"

"Yeah. It must be Steve's influence, but I'm kinda liking this freedom. Of not having to fly halfway around the world at a moment's notice, not dreading the next phone call, not having to follow orders without knowing what they mean."

"Yeah, must be Steve," Clint said, smirking. "Or maybe it's Stark." He waggled his eyebrows at her. She rolled her eyes and elbowed him. "Ow, that hurt." He clutched his ribs. "I think you dislocated something. Geez Tash, that was so not necessary."

"Big baby," she returned, poking out her tongue at him. "What if Coulson asks us for help? Not to join him, but for the Avengers and SHIELD to have an… an alliance of sorts?"

"I'd be cool with that." Clint shrugged. "If we think that it's gonna make a difference."

"We can run it over with the team," she said.

"Yeah – oh shit, have to tell them Coulson's alive. I am  _not_  looking forward to that conversation."

"Oh yeah, that." Natasha considered telling him that Tony knew, but decided against it. "We can get everyone back within the week, we'll tell them first night back?"

"Yeah, fine," Clint said as he followed her into the tower.

"You get to do the explaining!"

He groaned. "Why?"

"Cause you got to go on holiday for four damn months, that's why."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm seriously sorry for the slow progress, but I promise that I WILL finish this fic. I've got the rest of it planned out... sort of...


	10. Chapter 10

Bruce got back in three days, and Thor arrived the day after. The team was all back together now, with Sam and Rhodey in the city as well and Jane coming in next week. The first night the Avengers were all back together they had a team dinner, just the six of them. Natasha knew that Tony was glad Bruce was back; he would never admit it but she could tell that he missed him. Thor had been learning to use a cell phone under Jane’s instruction. Steve was proudly showing Thor something on his own phone, and the Asgardian's booming exclamations and laughter was heard clearly over the other conversations.

 

It also provided the perfect cover for Natasha and Clint to talk in private. "Do you want to tell them after dinner?" Natasha whispered.

 

The archer nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. He sighed. “They're all so happy, and we’re gonna have to put a downer ending to the night."

 

"I know." Natasha sounded wistful, and Clint glanced at her. There was the slightest hint of regret in her expression. He didn't know whether it was because of Tony, or the Avengers, or something else entirely, but she was letting her guard down, at least around the team. He looked away before she noticed his attention, and smiled inwardly. Whatever the cause, he was glad for her new openness; he knew how far she had come from her Soviet days and she deserved to have people who cared about her, people she trusted.

 

At a lull in the conversation, when most of the food was finished, Natasha cleared her throat and said, “We’ve got something to tell you all."

 

An hour later, the pair of assassins had finished explaining Coulson's survival. It was met with the shocked silence of the rest of the team; Tony, who already knew, didn’t make any input other than cross his arms over his chest and glower. Tony was brooding at his end of the table, like a storm was brewing below his seemingly calm surface. Natasha ignored the foreboding silence from his end of the table, but she knew that his anger was looming and she wished that he would vent it sooner rather than later.

 

“The son of Coul is a good man.” Thor broke the grave silence. "I cannot understand why he must hide the truth from us."

 

"It was under Fury's orders," Natasha said, well aware that it was the flimsiest of reasons.

 

"And that makes it okay?" Steve butt in. "Nat, you saw what following orders did to SHIELD."

 

"Yes, I saw," she said sharply. "But up until recently, you wouldn't have questioned orders either."

 

"That's because my orders didn't involve anything that would make me lose sleep at night."

 

Natasha narrowed her eyes. "Then I guess you're pretty lucky, aren't you?"

 

Thor cut in before Steve had a chance to make a rebuttal. "What was the reason for the concealment?"

 

"The operation to bring Coulson back was extremely classified, even he didn't know exactly what was involved until recently." Natasha looked across the table and met Tony's eyes briefly, before turning back to Thor. "It was originally meant for saving one of us, in the case of a fatal injury," she added.

 

Thor nodded, frowning, and while Steve still looked hurt and indignant, he did not argue.

 

"What Coulson did, and how he survived, isn’t the point," Clint said. “He wants to know if we’ll join SHIELD."

 

Bruce said, "I'm getting pretty tired of being called in when they need us, and being left to fend for ourselves when we needed their help. I didn't see them offering us any help these couple of months."

 

"Hey." Clint jumped up and rounded on Bruce. “SHIELD’s in enough trouble as it is right now, without having to offer their help every chance they get. Besides, I thought you didn’t _want_ SHIELD on your trail. Not even when we were keeping others off it.”

 

"That didn't stop you from making me come out of hiding."

 

"No one _made_  you do anything," Clint retorted. The doctor's fists balled up in rage, and it may have been a trick of the light but Natasha saw a hint of green creeping up Bruce's neck and into his face.

 

"Calm down!" Natasha put her hand on Clint's shoulder, forcing him to sit. He did, though he kept glaring at Bruce, who was still fuming, but at least the green had faded from his skin.

 

She looked around her at the angry, hurt, and frustrated faces. “We’re not going to join SHIELD unless we, as a team, decide to. But I think – and Clint agrees – that it’d be smart to work with them. They have the information and the resources, and they’re after the same people we are. But we're still our own team, we keep our autonomy. They don't get to tell us what we have to do, or where to go, or who to fight."

 

"We don't need them for that," Tony pointed out. It was the first time he'd spoken, and he sounded a lot calmer than Natasha had expected. "I can get into SHIELD's files anytime, and I can pay for anything we need."

 

"Think of them as our backup," Natasha said. "We don't have to answer to them, it's just that if they know what we're doing, and vice versa, we can get more done. We could deal with more and worry less." The others were thinking over her words, she knew. Tony resumed brooding, but didn't argue; Natasha took that as acceptance. Either way she would deal with him later.

 

“Think it over,” Clint said. “And we’ll get back to Coulson later."

 

“We can talk about this later,” Steve agreed. “Disassemble,” he said, and the group disbanded. Bruce went back to his floor while Steve and Thor headed to the TV room. Natasha could see that they were not yet sure of their decision; it was a lot to take in and they were all still more concerned with Coulson's survival and deception. Tony was still at the table, and she knew that he was waiting for her.

 

"They took it well enough," Clint said from next to her.

 

She laughed drily. "As well as could be expected, I suppose."

 

"You guys coming?" Steve said from the next room.

 

"I'll be there in a second," Tony called back. He held Natasha's gaze, indicating that he wanted to talk to her.

 

Clint followed Steve and Thor, but paused at the doorway. "Tasha?"

 

"Yeah – give me a moment," she said. He glanced at Tony, back at Natasha, and nodded before heading through the door to join the others.

 

Natasha looked at Tony, waiting for him to speak. He didn't; the silence drew on, infinite and monotone like a freefall and Natasha knew that inevitably they would splatter.

 

"You told him about us?" Tony's voice was like the ground slamming into both of them. 

 

"What?" Natasha was thrown for a moment; it was so bizarre that of all the things to fight over, this was the bone Tony picked. "Yeah, he kind of guessed," she said and Tony nodded, still unsmiling. "What's wrong?" she asked. 

 

"Why do you want to join SHIELD again? After what they did before? After you know what it's like to live without having to worry about dropping everything at a moment's notice?"

 

“I’m not joining them; _we_ , as a _team_ , are going to work _with_ them."

 

“Oh yeah, big difference,” he said snidely. “It’s not official but we’ll be doing their dirty work anyway.”

 

“You know what, we haven’t even decided on anything yet, so if you’ve got an opinion on this whole thing then why don’t you bring it up next time we have talk about it with everyone? Instead of taking it out on me?” Natasha snapped.

 

“Not like I didn’t try. You shot me down pretty quickly."

 

“I shot everyone down to defend my point. You don’t see Steve biting my ass for it, do you?"

 

“That’s cause you’re not his girlfriend."

 

“Cause that makes all the difference in the world."

 

“Jesus, Nat. I just want to –"

 

“To _what_ , Tony?"

 

“I – “ He rubbed his face and pushed his hands up to his crown and through his curls. “God, I hate what we’re like now that everyone’s back. I hate that when everyone else is here you stay away from me like I have the plague. I hate that I can’t hug you or kiss you in front of them. I hate that I can’t even let our closest friends know that you’re mine and I’m yours and –“ He fell defeatedly into his chair and slumped. “I just hate keeping secrets."

 

Natasha’s heart clenched in the agony of guilt. She had spent her life fiercely defending her secrets; Tony’s had his thrown in the limelight ever since he was born. She knelt down in front of him and took one of his hands in both of hers. “That’s ironic, for a man who has so many secrets,” she said, forcing lightheartedness, but it made the knife in her heart twist even more. Her voice shook; there was a lump in her throat that she tried to ignore but was steadily building up. “I know we’ve got issues, Tony. A lot of them. And we’re still working stuff out about – about being together, and everyone else suddenly being back really isn’t helping us come to terms with where we are with each other.” She met his gaze and continued, “But I –“ _I love you_  “– I care enough about you, about us, that I want us to work despite this. This is just – pardon the cliché – a bump in the road."

 

“How can you be so sure?” he said quietly. He trailed down her cheek with his free hand, feeling the soft skin, how easily he could break the membrane and how her red blood would spill over her pale skin. “I break everything – every _one_ – around me. I can’t keep one good thing around in my life."

 

“And I destroy everything I touch,” Natasha said self-depcrecatingly. “So I guess if anyone can be with me it’s you. Our jagged edges, they fit together."

 

His smile was watery, but it touched his eyes and made them shine like twin stars, distant in a dark sky. “Why do you know so much?"

 

She gave a small laugh from deep in her throat and his heart swelled at the warm, rich sound. “I don’t, I just know how I feel for –“ She broke off, gaze lowered self-consciously. Tony must have noticed her slip-up but he didn’t comment on it. “How I feel about us.” She stood up and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, let’s go join the others."

 

"Yeah, they might start talking about us," he said, half joking.

 

"About that," she said slowly. "I think it's time to tell them.” She had faith that both Tony's feelings and her own were strong enough to hold up against whatever might come up against them next. And if that was the case, she wanted to face those problems, as Tony had wanted to for far longer, without having to hide their relationship from the people who were their team and their family.

 

"Yeah?" Tony's face lit up and she nodded, letting go of her inhibitions to allow her smile to spread wide across her face. 

 

"Yeah," she confirmed. "But maybe not right now — I think one surprise is enough for tonight."

 

Tony laughed. "Yeah, poor Steve wouldn't be able to take it, he _is_ a senior citizen."

 

"Tony, that's horrible!" She laughed. "When do you want to tell them?"

 

He slung an arm around her shoulders. "Whenever you want, baby. We’re not gonna do or say anything you don’t want to.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last of the expository chapters, thank God we're done with those. I'm sorry it's been so boring but the next one will be a fun and fluffy chapter, before we move onto the next subplot in the chapter after.  
> Also, I'll be focusing more on Strings as it's more plot-driven, and I'll work on Broken as sort of a side project. So expect updates for Strings soon, I promise they're coming.


	11. Chapter 11

Natasha was panting as she lay on the floor, winded but unscathed. Steve, too, was out of breath, but less so than her, as per usual; she may have received a version of the Super Soldier Serum, but it was at best a watered down version of the one in Steve's body. They looked at each other for a moment, him waiting for her to recover. She took a deep breath, got to her feet, and walked back into the middle of the ring.

"Again."

He charged at her, she grabbed his arm and stepped to the side. He fell. She stepped on his arm, he grabbed her leg and pulled her down. She kicked him in the chest, scrambling backwards. He was on top of her before she could stand, and she covered her face with her arms to block his blows. In the gap between punches she rolled out from beneath him, got to her feet, and kicked his gut. He groaned and fell.

Natasha stepped back, breathing hard once again. Steve got to his hands and knees, panting. "Was that last kick actually necessary?"

"Totally," she deadpanned.

"In the gut, Nat?" He pulled himself into a sitting position

"Come on," she said, a smirk playing at the corner if her mouth. "It wasn't  _that_  hard."

He looked unconvinced. "You're gonna have to make that one up to me."

"Oh yeah? How?" She offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. Both of them standing barefoot, he was almost a foot taller than her.

He smiled, features settling into that warm expression. "Get coffee with me later?

"Um..." she hesitated. "I actually kind of have plans today," she told him ruefully.

"Oh." His face crumpled into disappointment, and she felt bad for rejecting him. She didn't often have qualms about disappointing people, but Steve was an exception, perhaps even more so than the rest of the Avengers. "How about Friday, then? We could get coffee, lunch, dinner, see a movie if you want, y'know, just... anything."

Realization smacked her like a right hook to the jaw. "Steve, I'm seeing someone."

"Oh." He blinked. " _Oh_. Okay, yeah, I thought, from DC, that you – um, no, it's okay, I – " He ran his hands over his face and took a deep breath. When he lifted his hands his cheeks were red, and it wasn't from the exercise.

"Steve, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know that you felt –"

"Can we just forget that this ever happened?" He said, giving an embarrassed smile.

"Oh, yeah, good idea." She took a step back to establish a friendly but impersonal distance between them. She gave him a little smile. "You're one of my closest friends, Steve. And one of the only people in the world that I trust."

"Thanks, Nat, that's… good to know."

"Yup," she mumbled, stepping off the mat to get her things. She was taking a long drink from her water bottle when he asked, "Can I ask, do I know —" He cut himself off mid-sentence, looked down and shook his head. When he met her eyes, he looked sad and forlorn. "Make sure he treats you well."

_He reminds me to eat and I remind him to sleep and we keep each other grounded to reality,_ she thought, and couldn't help the genuine smile. "He does." She headed for the door, towel draped over her neck and water bottle swinging at her side. "Do you still want to train tomorrow?"

He nodded hard, and his smile looked more like a grimace. "Yeah, definitely. See you later."

"Yeah, see you," she said before heading out of the gym. When she looked back over her shoulder, Steve was still standing on the boxing mat, staring at his feet like a lost puppy.

When Natasha got back to their room, Tony was asleep on his stomach, his limbs sprawled out over the king-sized bed and emitting quiet snores. He was a deep sleeper, when he didn't have a nightmare, or when he actually slept at all. Natasha was glad for this; she took a quick shower and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. With any luck he would just be waking up when she brought it into the room on a tray.

As it turned out he was still asleep, his mouth hung half-open. She almost couldn't bear to wake him, but she had pancakes that she had made – a once in a blue moon thing. So she set the tray down on the bedside table and got on the bed beside him

She leaned over him with her torso pressed against his back, and he groaned, fighting to stay asleep. She pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck, and another to the soft skin at his throat. He hummed, a pleased, rumbling sound almost like a purr. She chuckled, kissing his jaw, and he turned around to kiss her on the lips lazily, a hand on cupping her cheek to hold her to him. When they parted he mumbled, with his eyes still closed, "Why don't I get woken up like this every morning?"

She brushed her nose against his, making him open his eyes to look at her. "That would ruin the surprise."

"Hmm," he murmured and kissed her again. "But it wouldn't make it any less nice."

She laughed, and he loved the way she could open up and relax with him. He loved everything about her, and it was honestly a little scary to have a girlfriend he was so attracted to, even after months. It was also a little scary that his girlfriend could probably kill him in sixteen different ways without leaving the bed, but that was another issue entirely, and one that he was more attracted to than scared of. Natasha sat up and slapped his side lightly. "Up. I made pancakes."

"Really?" He perked up and sat up immediately, far more excited than a man his age should be over pancakes.

"Don't get your hopes up, this is a once in a very long while thing," Natasha said. "Don't think that I'm going to be all domestic now," she said grumpily to reassert her distaste for domesticity.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he assured her, leaning over her to get at the pancakes. She set the tray down between them, careful not to spill the coffee. "So what's the occasion?" he asked through a mouthful of pancakes.

"It's our six month anniversary," she said casually. Tony stopped mid-chew, and stared at her openmouthed. "Tony, close your mouth, that's disgusting," she admonished, wrinkling her nose in a way that Tony considered way too adorable for one of the most deadly assassins on the planet.

He swallowed quickly and exclaimed, "Six months? No way!"

"Yeah," she said. "Jarvis told me," she added. She wasn't sentimental, never had been. She'd been trained to believe that sentiment was nothing but a weakness. Just like love. But her relationship with Tony has done nothing but made her stronger, it gave her more than she could have gained alone. She wasn't about to start reminding him of their relationship every other week, and she was sure that she would forget their anniversaries before the year was over. But when Jarvis brought it up casually the other day, she'd wanted to do something special for Tony. It felt like a milestone, not only for them as a couple, but for both of them as individuals; it was certainly the longest healthy relationship she's had that didn't involve lying or power plays or beating each other up.

Tony grinned like an idiot and shook his head, looking at Natasha fondly. He was even more hopeless at dates than her; he sometimes forgot his own birthday. He was glad that she wasn't a woman who expected him to remember their anniversaries. That had been one of his major problems with his relationship with Pepper; she wanted to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, and he could never remember them. Natasha knew how he was, and being too practical herself to want to indulge in something so sentimental, she was content with nothing more than breakfast in bed. "This is why I love you," he said.

She froze. Her breath hitched. Her gaze fell from his face and to her lap, eyelashes fluttering as she blinked rapidly, her breath drawing in rapidly through parted lips. Tony felt as though a knife was run through him, a cold metal blade in his heart, the heart that he never showed anyone and was supposed to be nonexistent. He felt the tiny vibrations of Natasha's minute tremblings. Tentatively, he put a hand on her back. "Tasha?"

She slowly lifted her gaze to meet his. "This is what it feels like, then?" Her eyes were filled with disbelief and hope. "To be loved?"

A foreign protectiveness rose up within Tony's chest. Some deep-rooted instinct inside him made him throw his arms around her and cocoon her snugly against him, as though to shield her from all her fears and her past and her insecurities. He physically needed to have her in his arms, to let her know that she was loved, that she always will be loved. She was still shaking as her arms came up to hold him in a tremulous embrace. "Yeah," he whispered. "I love you so much."

She pulled back to look at him with gratitude. She'd been told that so many times; the first time a man confessed his love to her, he had used and manipulated her, and the subsequent times were little different, only the manipulating was tilted to her side more and more often. "Love" was a term thrown around for favours and information; before now, she had never had cause to believe in the word. "I love you too," she said hesitantly, sounding almost surprised, like she was only just coming to this conclusion. Before this she hadn't allowed herself to admit the strength of her feelings. In saying the words, all her armor was removed, she held her heart in her hand and offered it to Tony. But it didn't matter, for once it didn't make her weak, because he, too, was giving her his heart, just as scarred and broken as hers, but still beating, now in unison to hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of the first chapters I wrote for Broken, back when I thought it would be a short story (har har). It's one of the ones that I'm really proud of, cause I feel like this is such a key moment for Natasha.
> 
> Also, I started writing this fic right after I saw Cap 2 so Steve originally had a bigger role, but then I realized that I really don't see him and Natasha as a romantic couple. I want all the Romanogers platonic friendship/bromance, though


	12. Chapter 12

"Clint!"

Natasha yanked her blade out of the dead body, her other hand reaching for her gun and shooting – one, two – at the men running up behind her partner. They fell just as Clint spun around, arrow notched in his bow, and shot the one bringing up the rear.

"I think we got 'em all." He panted.

Natasha nodded, wiping her knife before tucking it back into her belt. "You okay?" she said. Clint sported wounds all over his face, including a particularly nasty looking one over the bridge of his nose.

He shrugged. "Fine." He rubbed a cut with the ball of his palm and it came away red. He grimaced, wiped it on his pants, and pressed it against his cheek again. "Got a bandaid?"

She rolled her eyes. "I carry weapons, not a first-aid kit." Nevertheless she went into the bathroom and returned with the hotel's sorry excuse of medicinal supplies. While Clint plastered a band-aid over his nose, Natasha she strode across the floor, littered with the bodies of half a dozen Hydra agents, towards the table. There it was, what they'd come for – a thumb drive that contained a copy of Hydra's plans.

The Avengers had decided not to join SHIELD but to operate as an independent group alongside it. A Hydra source informed them that the terrorist organization's plans were scattered over the globe, each containing a different plan about an attack on that part of the world. Half a dozen SHIELD teams were dispersed to each location, trying to retrieve the thumb drives. Natasha and Clint were now in a hotel suite in the Czech Republic where they had hopefully gotten one of the thumb drives, and taken out a handful of Hydra agents along the way. Steve was on a team with Sharon Carter and another SHIELD agent, while Tony and Bruce would analyze the data they collected.

As soon as they got back to their safe house, Clint called Coulson while Natasha plugged the thumb drive into her computer. "We've got it, sir."

Natasha turned off the wifi and all outgoing connections on her computer; it was better to be safe than risk a cyber attack. There they were – plans for bombing an embassy. "Yes, sir," Clint was saying. "Flight at nine tonight, okay, that works."

"Hold on," Natasha said. Clint looked at her in surprise. "We should check out the embassy," she said. "Just to be sure they haven't done anything yet."

"They can't have," Clint said. "We got to the hotel as soon as they did."

"They could have planted the bomb before that," Natasha argued. "Let's check it out just to be sure."

Clint sighed, but relented. "Fine." Turning back to the phone, he explained to Coulson, "Nat thinks we should make sure that Hydra hasn't made a move yet. Everything should be fine, so noon tomorrow? Alright, see you, Phil." He hung up and glared at Natasha, only half jokingly. "I was looking forward to my apartment. My milk is about to go bad."

She rolled her eyes. "You're getting spoiled, Clint," she said, patting his arm.

"Just like my milk." He pouted. "Come on, we can head over to the embassy now. If we find that there's nothing there – which we will – we can still call Phil and get on a flight tonight."

—

They parked two blocks from the embassy. Hydra's plans were to plant a bomb in the unused maintenance tunnels under the embassy, blowing the whole thing up. Natasha and Clint went in through a manhole and climbed down a ladder. The metal was cold and sticky from the damp air, which seemed to cloy to their skin. After a surprisingly short climb, Natasha's boots touched the rough earth floor. Flashlight in one hand, Glock in the other, she went in the tunnel. Clint followed, bow loaded and his hand on the bowstring ready to shoot. The tunnel was musky and a vaguely sewer-like scent clung to the walls and air; Natasha wrinkled her nose.

The tunnels twisted in ways unlike the streets above them, splitting into different paths. Straight on, then a left, another left, then the rightmost path… Natasha tried to judge the direction but it was getting harder. "Dammit, Hydra, why don't you make a map," she muttered under her breath. "Or, you know, post a couple signs around, like 'this way to the embassy' or something."

"Pshh they're terrorists, they don't need signs," Clint answered and Natasha laughed.

"Right? Remember that one time in Budapest when – " she cut off. "Hold on, I think we're here." Natasha took a tablet out of her bag and pulled up the diagram from the HYDRA files. "Yeah, looks like the right place."

She showed the tablet to Clint, who nodded. "Yeah, looks right, there's the sign there from the diagram." He pointed at the "warning" symbol on the wall, an exclamation mark on a yellow triangle, next to a bunch of wires that looked like a safety hazard without needing a bomb.

"Ugh, this place is literally begging for an accident," Natasha said. "Speaking of which, let's check if they've planted the explosives."

"And then we can go home." Clint looked hopeful, almost like a puppy.

She smiled, thinking of Tony and their bed waiting for her back in New York. "Yes, and then home."

But evidently they weren't going to get home that day; a quick sweep showed them a line of explosives rigged against the ceiling, enough to take down the embassy and possibly a radius of half a block. "Dammit," Clint groaned. "You  _had_  to check it out."

"We're lucky we did," Natasha pointed out. "Can you reach them?"

The ceiling was low, and standing on his toes with his arm outstretched, Clint managed to detach the first explosive.

"Careful –" Natasha warned but he paid her no mind as he tugged the half dozen charges, connected to one other with a thin wire, fell off. Natasha caught four of them as they fell. A faint ticking came from them. "Shit, these are active," she said.

"Damn right they are," said a male voice behind her and she spun around to see a dozen Hydra agents. Her body instinctively moved into a combative stance and Clint notched an arrow and drew his bow. She recognized two of the agents. Alder and Jenson. The former had been on her team the first time she was on a SHIELD mission. She had seen the latter enter SHIELD as a fresh-faced recruit, had even had a hand in his training. He was a good fighter, fast and vicious. But she was trained by the Red Room, and she was faster, more vicious.

"Hand those over, Romanoff," Alder said coolly. Using the wire that connected the explosives, she reeled in the others and gathered them in her arms. Alder sighed. "You know that we can shoot you now and get this whole thing over with, don't you?"

"Shoot her and you're a dead man," Clint said grimly, training his arrow on Alder's forehead. "Though even if you don't you're probably not gonna live."

One of the Hydra agents laughed. "You have one arrow, we have a gun each. I think the odds are in our favour, Katniss."

"If the rest of your croonies are as dumb as you are," Clint snarled, "I think the odds are pretty even."

Natasha subtly shifted the weight of the explosives to one arm, her other reaching for her gun. Jensen saw her and pointed his gun at her. "Don't you think about it, Romanoff."

She froze. "I'm going to put the explosives down. Do  _not_ shoot me." Clint gave her an incredulous glance. She returned a knowing look. Understanding flashed across his eyes and he gave her a tiny nod. She bent down slowly. The weight of the bombs were still in one arm, and she kept her other hand free. She was almost on her knees when she dropped the bombs, grabbed the gun with her free hand and fired into a Hydra agent's chest. She heard his groan and the scream of another as Clint's arrow struck him. She spun out of the way and Alder's shot went wide. She whipped her other gun from the holster at her hip and fired at the Hydra agents. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Clint had found a crevice in the wall and had ducked into it for cover. She, on the other hand, was exposed with no protection from the bullets raining down on her.

A bullet brushed her shoulder and frayed her suit, but Tony had redesigned it and it was tough enough to withstand a bullet from a distance. Clint beckoned and she ran across the length of the corridor towards his crevice. A bullet pierced a worn patch of her suit and into her arm. She cried out, but kept running until she met Clint's arms and he pulled her to the safe spot. She was starting to feel the pain in her arm from the bullet; it was still inside her and it burned intensely. She pressed hard over her wound, but the blood trickled over her fingers. Clint glanced at her bleeding arm, his brow drawn down in worry. "We gotta get out of here."

"We can't leave them with the bombs," she said. They had lost the element of surprise, and were hopelessly outnumbered. The bullets ricocheted off the section of the wall they were hiding behind.

"We can't stay here much longer," Clint said.

"How many of them are there left?"

Clint peered around. "Seven, maybe eight. Jensen's one of them."

Natasha ducked out and fired two shots quickly. "Five left. We've got a chance," Natasha said. "Let's surprise them one more time." She reloaded her gun and Clint notched three arrows into his bow. "On my count – three, two, one!" She leapt out with a gun in each hand Clint shot arrows in quick succession. She saw two agents go down at the corner of her eye, arrows sticking out of them. She shot without seeing who she hit, but she heard their cries. The adrenaline pumped through her, and she forget about the pain in her arm or the blood streaking down her side. All that mattered was her fingers on the triggers, the recoil of the guns and the cries that told her she was hitting her marks.

Only Jensen and another Hydra agent were left. At Jensen's command they turned and fled down the tunnel. Natasha almost followed but she Clint called her name and she turned around at him. "He's alive," the archer said, kneeling by a fallen Hydra agent. Sure enough, he was twitching on the floor, an arrow sticking out of his side. Natasha knelt down next to him and grabbed him by the collar. "Where'd they go?"

"I don't know," the agent groaned.

"Stop lying," she growled through gritted teeth.

"Safe house. Won't be going back… to hotel."

"Give me a location!"

He moaned as she shook him, coughed, and said, "Don't know. There are many… many in the country. And across the borders."

"Give me a list. Now."

He made a choking sound that took her a minute to recognize as a laugh. "Too late," he said. "I might be dying, but you're dying with me."

It took a second for that to click. "They're going to detonate the explosives early?" In response the man only laughed his horrible, throttling laugh.

"Shit!" Clint grabbed one of the explosives. "We need to defuse these before they blow – how much time do we have?"

"Not enough," the dying man croaked. "Four minutes, four and a half if you're lucky." He grinned a madman's grin. "Stay or run, either way you're going to die." He cackled again, but that clearly sapped the rest of his strength because he uttered a final "hail Hydra!" before his horrible laughter died with him.

Natasha cursed in Russian. "Can you do it?" she asked Clint. "Disarm the bombs in time?"

"Probably not," he said. "I'll try my best." He knelt down. "Okay, let's see…" he examined the bombs. "Looks like these are just charges, only one has the receiver from the remote. We just need to disarm that one to stop them from blowing. So what you gotta do right now is cut the wires between them – that way even if we don't get it done in time only one's gonna blow."

"If I cut the wire won't the timer go into overdrive or something?" Natasha asked. She's only had a handful of experience with bombs, since she usually chose more elegant methods of killing. Her dealings with bombs either involved setting them up or having them blown up in her face; she's never had to disarm one before.

"No," Clint answered, his hands already working at the shell of a bomb, trying to find whether it contained the receiver. "It's just the wires inside the bombs you can't cut. And be careful not to shake them up too much, these might not be stable. Try not to touch the pieces inside them."

Natasha clipped the wires between the bombs with the knife in her boot. She picked up a second bomb and prised open the plastic shell, careful to avoid the metal bits and pieces that stuck out. "What am I looking for?"

"It's small and flat, in a square or rectangular shape. About this big," Clint demonstrated with his hands. "It's usually cased in plastic, and there's a receiver wire from it."

Natasha poked around inside the bomb. "Yeah, don't think it's in here," she said, moving onto another. Clint had already taken apart two and discarded them to the side.

"Me neither…" he said. "Hold on." Natasha froze and looked up at him. "I think I've got it – yeah, this is it." His hands were steady as he worked on the bomb. "Nat, hold onto this piece." She did what he asked. "How much time do we have?"

"Ninety seconds," she answered, and looked at him. "Clint?"

He looked up to meet her eyes. "Hm?"

"Work fast."

He gave a short laugh. "No shit." He lowered his head again, carefully pulling apart the bomb. "Gotta get this bit… if I touch the pin we're screwed. Okay, easy now… it's just like Operation," he said to himself. They both held their breath as Clint gently eased the receiver out without touching any of the other parts. Slowly, he played the most delicate game of Operation in the world and extracted the receiver from the bomb. When it was safely out of the bomb, he met Natasha's gaze and they both laughed in relief.

"That's it, then," Natasha said, standing up and brushing the dirt off her suit. "Now we can go home." She offered a hand to Clint and pulled him to his feet.

"What time is it?"

Natasha checked her watch. "Ten at night. Too late to get Phil to fly a plane out."

"Damn." He gestured to the pile of discarded bombs. "Let's get these out of here." He bent and picked up two of the bombs. There were two bombs they hadn't checked for the receiver yet; one of those had ended up a few meters away from them, and Natasha went to pick that up.

She was bending down to get it when it blew up in her face and everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more you comment and leave kudos the sooner I can update...


	13. Chapter 13

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

She wasn't sure whether the annoying noise woke her up or kept her asleep, but either way it was the first thing Natasha was aware of when she regained consciousness.

The second was that her throat was really, really dry.

And then came the pain, which slammed into her like a brick wall and blocked out everything else – except for that annoying beeping sound."Hrrrgg…" Her head felt like it had split apart and her body hurt all over. She opened her eyes a slit – the light was too bright and it made her headache worse – and promptly squeezed them shut again, giving another groan.

"Hey." Her lover's voice sounded muted, like it came from far away. The side of the bed dipped with his weight. She became aware that her hand was in his. She cracked her eyes open; his image was distorted with the bright lights and her fuzzy head. She tried to say his name but it came out warbled. "Shh, it's okay, I'm here," he said gently, rubbing circles on the back of her hand. "It's okay, Tash. You're safe now, you're safe."

"Where'm I?" she managed to croak, struggling to open her eyes through the disorientation and the pain. She was reclined somewhere, and from the haze of pain she managed to discern the horribly familiar feeling of tubes sticking out of her.

"SHIELD base in Austria," Tony answered. His free hand brushed a few strands of hair from her face and his fingers trailed down the exposed skin of her cheek. "You were out for three days, Tasha. How're you feeling?"

"Hurts," she muttered. She could swallow most pain without complaint, if only simply out of pride and needing to be strong, but right now her entire body stung like she had been raked across broken glass. Both inside and out.

Even though her vision was blurry, she could see how Tony's form tightened with concern and guilt. "Hold on." He spun one of the dials next to the bed. "There, morphine should kick in any moment now." She nodded, her eyes closed. Warmth replaced the pain in her veins, and the familiar fuzzy feeling kicked in. She let out a long sigh. "Better?" he asked and she nodded. "Is there anything else you want?" he pressed and she shook her head. Then she thought better of it and said, tugging his hand, "stay."

"Okay," Tony said softly. She looked so tiny on the bed, so fragile with her eyes closed and her body limp against the pillow, her red hair the only flash of color on her. With her commanding presence and her toughness, it was easy to forget about her small stature and how humanly breakable she was. Her head was wrapped in a bandage, as was her arm where she'd been shot. The left side of her face and neck were swathed in gauze from temple to collar, which hid burns from the blast. Bruises spotted her body in a motley of blue and purple and black. Tubes stuck out of her nose, courtesy of the messed up lungs from the pressure of the explosion, and an IV drip was attached to her upturned arm, where the morphine dripping into her was the only thing that could dull her pain. He knew how stubborn she was, how much she needed to appear strong so as not to seem the weak woman in a team of men; it made his heart constrict to think of how much pain she must be in, to willingly ask for more painkillers.

"Wha 'appened?" she said without opening her eyes.

He frowned and tightened the grip on her hand, before realizing that he could be hurting her and relaxing his hold to as a light contact. "There was another receiver in one of the bombs, a backup in case the first was intercepted. Hydra activated it and it blew up when you went to get it. You were lucky you'd thought of cutting the wires between the bombs – otherwise they'd all have exploded."

"Hmm," she murmured, trying to fit the pieces together in her mind. Her brain didn't seem to want to work; it was sluggish and she couldn't find the pieces she needed to create the picture. She remembered the tunnels under the embassy. Hydra had planned to blow up the embassy, yes, she was starting to recall. The thumb drive they'd gotten, that was how they knew about Hydra's plan. The picture became clear. Hydra turned up in the tunnels, then the fight, and then the bomb that Clint defused… The thought struck her and she grabbed at Tony's hand, wide green eyes looking up at him in panic. "Clint?"

"He's okay, don't worry," he reassured her, pressing her back down to the bed gently. "You're in worse shape than he is." She breathed a sigh of relief. "Your suit protected most of you from flesh wounds," – there was a hint of pride in his voice – "but your lungs got screwed up so you gotta be on oxygen or a while. And your hands were exposed so they're burnt pretty badly," Tony said. Natasha inspected her hands and saw that they were still covered with bandages, with her fingers bared. She wasn't sure if it was because of her pounding head and her still blurry vision, but they looked swollen. "You were thrown against something so your right side's all bruised up" – hence the bandage around her head and the pain down the right side of her body – "and there are a couple of burns down the left side of your face and neck." That would explain the pain that seemed to intensify every time her blood throbbed through her jugular. "The bomb must have been to your left, and you landed on your right."

Her eyebrows pulled down in the middle and she nodded. He could see the anger in her eyes, directed inwards at herself. "Hey," he said firmly. "It's not your fault, Tash." She looked up at him in shock that he knew her thoughts. "This doesn't in any way make you weak. Not to me and not to anyone else."

"It does to me," she said, her voice thick with self-loathing. "I should've been more careful." She had been trained to equate failure with death, and she had to constantly remind herself that Tony and her teammates wouldn't judge her in that way.

He sighed, carding his fingers through her hair, the only part of her he could touch that he was sure wouldn't cause her pain. "You're too hard on yourself."

She smile wryly and then stopped, because it hurt too much. "That's why I keep you around. You make me feel good about myself."

"I hope I do more than that," he said. Under the playful gleam in his eyes was something serious.

Natasha laid her hand against his cheek. "You do," she said fervently. Then she scooted over, with some difficulty due to her injuries, and patted the empty spot on the bed next to her. Tony accepted the offer, toeing off his shoes and sitting next to her. He put an arm around her shoulders, but thought better of it at the sight of the bandages that covered her shoulder.

She laid her hand against his cheek to examine his face. The bags under his eyes, the overgrown goatee, the lines of worry around his mouth all spoke of his sleepless nights. "You look like shit," she said.

"Thanks." He rolled his eyes. "You don't look so great yourself."

She laughed; it hurt her lungs and her ribs so it was a short one. "I was almost blown up, so that might have something to do with it."

His brow creased. "Yeah."

"Hey." She ran her fingers down his jaw to his chin, tilting his head to face her. "I'm here now, i'm alive."

A ghost of a smile wavered over his lips. "Yeah. That's all that matters." He sounded like he was convincing himself as much as her.

"I might not be an agent of SHIELD anymore, but i'm still an Avenger," she said. "And I will be caught in danger. Sometimes pretty life threatening. But given that i've survived literally everything thrown at me so far – and that's a hefty list, you'll know from my file – chances are I'll survive whatever's coming, too. And your worrying or blaming yourself isn't going to change anything about that."

He cupped her face, gently so as not to aggravate her burns, and said, "that's why I love you."

"You utter sap," Natasha said, dropping her hand from his face to hold him around the waist. Even though she leaned her head against his shoulder and faced down at their laps, Tony could hear her smile. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and she yawned. The speech had tired her out, as had all the talking and the disorientation of waking up after three days.

"Sleep," he told her, stroking her hair and she closed her eyes. "If you need anything I'll be right here."

"More morphine," she mumbled without opening her eyes and she felt him reach for the dial. In moments the drug kicked into her system and she gave herself over to the sweet dreamless sleep, knowing that Tony was next to her and that meant, more than anything else, that she was safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was sort of blown away by all those comments last time. That response was amazing, thank you so much guys! That's why you get a quick (or quicker) update this time. I hope you guys like this chapter, I love having Natasha almost die and Tony angsting about it.


	14. Chapter 14

Natasha had grown up knowing that recovery meant doctors sticking needles into her, and pushing herself as far as her body would allow so she could join in training again to make up for what she had missed. It had taken her a while, after joining SHIELD, to get used to having (too) generous amount of time off for recovery, and to Clint's constant worry and presence at her bedside. Now, though, it was a familiar feeling, even if he did nag at her way too much.

"Is everyone here?" Natasha asked. It was the day after she woke up and she was feeling much better.

"Yeah, the whole team," Clint said. He was sitting on the opposite end of her bed with his legs crossed, facing her. Bandaids were plastered over his face and one of his arms were bandaged, but other than that he was fine, if a little banged up. He was munching on a bag of Doritos."As soon as I got you out of there and got Phil –"

"Thanks for that, by the way," she said, nudging him with her toe and avoiding his eyes. Apologies and gratitude were not her forte.

"Yeah, well, I need you around to stop us from having fun," he answered with a half-smile. "Anyway, Phil called the rest of the Avengers. Cap's mission was almost finished so he was pulled out, and the others flew in on Stark's private jet. That's handy, having a boyfriend with a private jet."

Natasha gave a half-smile and said, "They all know about us, don't they? About me and Tony."

"Probably, yeah," Clint answered. "No one asked, not with you knocked up – I mean knocked out –"

"You're lucky that my hands hurt to much for me to punch you."

"– but pretty sure they know. Stark did spend more time at your bedside than me."

"At least we were planning on telling them anyway," Natasha muttered, scrunching up her nose. She was just worried about how Steve would take it, given their last meeting. He hadn't been in to see her yet, apart from coming with the rest of the team the evening she woke up. "How're you holding up?"

He shrugged. "Okay, sorta banged up but you know me, I'm fine, I've walked away from worse."

"So have I," Natasha pointed out. "And Tony insists on hovering over me like I'm about to die."

Clint leaned back and laughed. "You guys are disgusting."

She poked her tongue out at him. "You and Bobbi are no better."

He put on an air of offense. "Me and Bobbi are totally not like that. We just mess around and have some fun, you know that."

"She's on Coulson's team, by the way," Natasha said. "Have you talked to her?"

Clint chuckled and pulled down the collar of his shirt in response to show her a red crescent mark on his collarbone. "Have I?"

"Ugh, I did not have to see that," Natasha wrinkled her nose. "So it's just you and me left here at base?"

"And Bobbi," Clint said, wriggling his eyebrows at her and she groaned, facepalming. He laughed. "Yeah, just us and Coulson. All active agents are out hunting down Hydra. And the rest of the team's out to kick Jensen's ass."

"Oh dear God," Natasha said. She imagined the look on the former SHIELD agent's face when he realized that Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk were out to get him. "If he wasn't a total dickhead that almost got me blown up, I might actually feel sorry for him."

* * *

"Not here," Steve announced. "They've cleared out."

"Dammit!" Tony growled, frustration throbbing in his skull. The Avengers – minus Natasha and Clint – were in a storage shed just outside the city, one of the known Hydra safe houses in Croatia. There were signs that it had been recently inhabited, judging from the lack of dust and recent food wrappers left inside. But it was void of the Hydra agents they were trying to find. "That was the last one we had in the area."

"We'll move on," Thor promised, "until we find the men who hurt Natasha and Clint."

"We'd better," Tony said darkly under his breath.

"If I were a Hydra agent in the Czech Republic," Bruce said, "who knows that the Avengers are after me, where would I go?"

"Get out of the country ASAP," Steve said. "Go west, make for the German border. Hydra's got plenty of ties there."

"Or south to Austria," Bruce suggested. "We busted a couple of their safehouses in Graz, we know that they've got to have a base in the country."

"Or even further south." All eyes turned to Tony. "To Sokovia."

"There's been no indication of Hydra activity there," Steve argued.

"Exactly." Tony pointed out, sticking an index finger towards Steve. His dark eyes were burning with either genius or madness. "We've busted all their other bases. They know we're on their tail. Sokovia's practically the only country left in the region that we haven't searched for Hydra. That's why they'll go there."

Steve shook his head. "Neither have we been to Germany. And we know for sure that Hydra has connections there."

"They're in Sokovia," Tony snapped, losing patience. He knew that Sokovia was a long shot, even more so than Germany. And he knew that there was a good chance they'd turn up empty handed again. But his gut was telling him that Sokovia would lead him to the Hydra agents who had hurt Natasha. "Trust me, Steve - though I know you won't."

Steve retorted hotly, "I've trusted you, Stark, since –"

"Guys!" Bruce interjected. Two pairs of eyes, one blue and one brown, glared at him. "Leave it!

Thor joined in, his deep voice grave. "What's important here is that we find Jensen and those other agents. We can't do that if we're squabbling amongst ourselves."

"Fine," Steve said shortly.

Tony cut in before the captain could continue. "I'm off to Sokovia. Anyone who wants to join me is welcome to." He slammed the visor down. He knew how insane it sounded, running off to a country with no known Hydra activity. He also knew that Thor would be inclined to follow Steve, and as for Bruce – he was a loyal friend, but the scientist in him must be screaming to go to Germany, the more logical choice. Tony couldn't bear for them to see the hurt that would be written over his face when they rejected him.

"Germany," Steve announced. He looked around at them all, his jaw set, daring them – especially Tony – to challenge him. "Thor, Bruce – you're free to choose."

"I say we go west, then, captain," Thor said, as expected. Nevertheless, Tony felt his heart sink a little bit when the Asgardian stood by Steve's side.

"Banner?" Steve prompted.

The scientist was pinching the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe I'm saying this," he gave a heavy sigh, "but I'm going with Tony."

"What?" Tony felt lightheaded. He had known that Bruce would be conflicted, but he'd never thought – never  _dared_  to think – that he would choose to side with Tony, over his own logic.

"I'll probably regret it," Bruce said grudgingly as he trudged to Tony's side, "But I can't let you walk in there alone."

Tony wanted to clasp his friend in a tight hug, but he settled for a hand on the shoulder. He lifted his visor so Bruce could see his sincere expression as he said a quiet "thank you," to which the doctor gave a half-smile and said, "yeah, anytime, you ass."

"Alright then, let's do this." Tony's heart was considerably lighter than it had been moments ago. All that he had left to do was to kick Jensen's ass and get back to Natasha's arms. Piece of cake – or so he hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, but at least you had (semi) frequent updates for Strings? :D


	15. Chapter 15

“Here’s the plan,” Tony said to Bruce as they drove towards the Sokovian border. “We find out where Jensen went and kick his ass. And maybe bring down Hydra at the same time. Piece of cake, right?"

“Yeah, piece of cake,” Bruce deadpanned. “That was what you said when we left the SHIELD base in Austria."

“I did not say ‘piece of cake’,” Tony insisted.

“You said something to the same effect,” Bruce argued. “Seriously, how does Natasha deal with you?"

“Uh, she’s sort of in awe of my good looks, charm, and wit,” Tony said. Bruce gave him a look that said, _stop joking, this is Natasha Romanoff and she would sooner lose an arm than be starstruck, least of all by you._ Tony huffed. “Fine, you take the fun out of everything,” he pouted. “She’s amazing, really."

“How long have you guys been a thing?” Bruce asked.

“Um. We just had our six month anniversary, but then that was a month ago… or maybe three… so, uh…"

“It’s been seven months and twenty-two days,” Jarvis put in helpfully.

“There you go,” Tony said with a smile.

Bruce laughed and shook his head. “You’re hopeless."

“If it makes you feel any better, Natasha doesn’t mind,” Tony said. She knew that he was a pity case and she put up with him all the same. She even made him feel better about himself, remind him that he wasn’t always an idiot. Even if he _was_ a genius at the same time.

“You know,” Bruce said, “I don’t think any other man can keep up with her."

“Yeah?” Tony perked up. Natasha had reassured him – not out loud because she would never do something so mushy – that she loved him for accepting her and for understanding her. While he knew intellectually that that was true, he sometimes still couldn’t believe it. Having someone else confirm it was good, it was reassuring.

“Yeah,” Bruce repeated. “And I don’t think any other woman can keep up with you, either."

“Now that’s true,” Tony agreed, leaning back in his seat and propping his feet on the dashboard. “If she couldn’t I wouldn’t have bothered with her.” It was half true; he would probably still try to get in her pants, but he wouldn’t have fallen in love with her the way he had.

“Ever so humble,” Bruce teased.

Tony did a mock bow. “Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, at your service."

Bruce laughed, then sobered as they passed a sign that announced that they had passed the Sokovian border. “Nearly there,” he said. “Keep your eyes open."

“Not even gonna blink,” Tony muttered under his breath. “Now how do we start… Jarvis, pull up a list of known Hydra safe houses in Sokovia."

“None, sir,” the AI replied.

Tony cursed. “Potential safe houses, then? Inner city apartments, houses in the middle of nowhere, abandoned but livable places?"

“Delivered to your tablet, sir,” came the reply and when Tony dug out his tablet it was there on a map, a dozen points. He stroked his goatee, trying to narrow it down.

“Places that are owned by shell companies?"

About half the dots remained.

“Good, good. Any place that’s been acquired since SHIELD fell?"

Four points remained, two in the city, one in the suburbs and one in the countryside. “We’ll head for the city first,” Tony decided.

“Sir,” Jarvis piped up. “Both of the inner city safe houses are near the square in the middle of the city, where citizens have been staging protests.” News articles came up on Tony’s tablet about the civilian protests in the country. “The roads have been blocked for weeks; no one’s allowed in or out of the city centre. On the other hand, the safe house in the countryside is near here; I believe that you can pass by it if you take a short detour."

“We should check that one out first,” Bruce said. “If they’re not there we can head towards the city. We’ll find out how to get to the other two safe houses later."

“Fair enough,” Tony agreed. “Jarvis, map the route for us." 

“I just did,” Jarvis replied as the route on the car’s GPA changed.

They parked by the road half a mile away from the safe house and continued towards it on foot. It was an old farmhouse and barn that stood miles away from the nearest building. The house had once been blue, but was now white from the sun and the peeling paint. The roof of the barn looked like it was about to cave in.

“Looks like no one’s been here for a while,” Bruce said as they climbed out of the car. Tony internally agreed with Bruce, but he ordered the Iron Man suit to be on sentinel mode all the same, following just behind them. If he was going to get shot at he preferred to be able to retaliate. They made their way up the path to the house and up the porch steps. The wooden boards of the porch creaked like an old lady’s knees and Tony winced at the sound.

Tony tried the front door, which was locked. 

“Could mean Hydra’s hiding something in there,” he said hopefully.

“Or that the owners are perfectly normal people who want to keep out creeps like us,” Bruce pointed out.

"One way to find out." Tony signaled to the Iron Man armor. It lifted an arm and blasted at the door, which flew clean off its hinges and fell backwards with an echoing _thud!_  The sound ricocheted around the hallway and the dusty, dimly lit house. 

Tony led the way in and Bruce followed close behind. They went down a short, narrow corridor. It led to a sitting room with a moth-eaten, half-collapsed sofa. A staircase was on one side leading up to – 

_Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!_ They dove behind the sofa to take cover from the bullets that rained down around them. A man was firing at them from the landing with a machine gun, shouting something upstairs in a language Tony couldn’t place. Bullets nicked the top of the sofa.

“Code green?” Bruce called over the sound of the machine gun.

Tony shook his head. “We need to take at least one of these guys alive to know what their plans are. And to make them pay for what they did to Tasha."

“You mean worse than the Hulk?” Bruce said. “Okay, go for it, Tony."

Tony summoned the suit to him. It flew towards them and he leapt out from behind to sofa as it opened and he ran into its open cavity. It closed up seamlessly behind him. With the same momentum he jumped up to the landing and fired at the man. The Hydra agent fell down dead. Tony looked up the flight up stairs to see half a dozen men rushing at him. He blasted at one, grabbed another’s gun and swung it into his face, then dropped it and blasted with both his gauntlets into two more men.

The last agent left was almost trembling in fear. He was a young man, no more than twenty-five, his face beardless as a boy’s. He reached for the handgun in his belt and Tony knocked it out of his hands easily. He whimpered, hands around his head as he waited for Tony to strike the blow.

“Jarvis?” Tony said, “Please tell me I didn’t just kill Jensen."

“Negative, sir. He appears not to be here."

“Good. At least I can still torture the asshole,” Tony muttered. He grabbed the agent and hauled him downstairs. Bruce was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Tony pulled the agent towards the sofa they had hid behind, which was now bullet-bitten in addition to being moth-bitten. He shoved the kid onto the sofa and he sat, shoulders hunched, knees pressed tightly together, hands pale and wringing in his lap.

He turned to the agent and said, “Is there anyone else here?"

The kid shook his head. 

“Watch him while I go check,” Tony said to Bruce, who nodded. Tony went upstairs, which contained three rooms that were next to bare of any furniture. There was no one. He went back down and snarled at the kid, “Where’s Jensen?"

“I don’t… I don’t know any Jensen,” the kid replied, his English heavily-accented by some Slavic tongue. Natasha would know, Tony thought. He remembered how she looked, so pale and fragile in her hospital bed, her skin covered with burns. It made his own skin sear with anger and he snapped at the kid, “Try better. He came to Sokovia from Czech three days ago."

The kis swallowed. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he repeated.

_Liar._ Natasha’s voice spoke in Tony’s head. He held up an arm, aiming the blaster on his palm at the kid’s head. The circular blaster whirled to life and starting glowing white-blue. “Last chance."

The kid looked into the brightening blaster with wide, terrified eyes. “Okay, I talk, I talk!” he blurted out, and the light behind the blaster dimmed. “Jensen came two days ago. Went to city centre."

"What does he want there?” Tony demanded.

“I don’t know –“ he began and the blaster whirled again. “I really don’t know!" 

_He’s telling the truth,_ came Natasha’s voice and Tony trusted it. “Okay, fine. Do you know which safe house he’s in?"

The kid looked down, ashamed. In a voice that was barely a thread more than silence, he whispered, “Yes… but is not safe house.” Bruce furrowed his brow and the kid continued, “Is base."

Looking at Bruce, Tony saw his own shock mirrored on his face.  

* * *

“I know that look,” Bruce said as he got in the car.  

“What?” Tony said. The Hydra agent was bound and gagged in the backseat. 

Bruce stopped and stared at Tony. “ You are not going into the Hydra base by yourself."

“I won’t,” Tony reassured him

“Okay, good –"

“– I’ve got you."

“Fuck!” Bruce buried his face in his hands. “No, _we_ “ – he gestured to indicate the pair of them – “ are not going to storm the Hydra base by ourselves."

“With our friend Anton?” Tony suggested, pointing his thumb at the kid in the backseat.

Bruce facepalmed again. “By the way, remind me again what Anton’s doing back there?” He tilted his head to gesture at the backseat. 

“Well, he’s just staring out the window and I think –"

“No, smartass,” Bruce cut in, rolling his eyes. “Why are we taking him with us?"

“We made a deal to keep him alive if he told us what he knew,” Tony said. “I might not care about my reputation but I kind of like keeping my word."

“So your plan is to bring him into a war zone? Brilliant.” Bruce deadpanned. “Look, we should get back to SHIELD –"

“And sit around waiting for them to make a decision? We can do this much faster, Bruce."

“No. No, no, no. I’ve followed you to Sokovia when it seemed like you were on a wild goose chase –"

“But we stumbled onto the Hydra base by accident."

“– I am _not_  going to take over the base. If it were a safe house, and we’re just after Jensen, fine. I’ll do that for you. But this is Hydra’s _base_. This is everything they’ve got – every man, every gun, every secret weapon we don’t know about. We call for backup. We need the rest of the Avengers."

Tony’s eyes were hard flints. “If you’re not coming with me I’m going in by myself." 

“And what will Natasha do to me when you’ve gotten yourself killed?” Bruce stated softly, and the tension went out of Tony’s body. Bruce was right; he wasn’t alone anymore. Not in the way he was before Iron Man and everything; not even in the way he was after he found a family with the Avengers. Now, he was half of a whole and his choices affected Natasha, too. No matter how much he wanted to storm into the Hydra base and kill Jensen along with every Hydra agent, the voice of reason told him that that would only get him killed.

Then he remembered how Natasha had looked when Clint brought her back – blood everywhere, the smell of burnt skin and charred hair replacing the scent of her perfume. How breakable she had looked when they finally brought her out of surgery, her eyes closed, hair limp against her pale skin, tubes sticking out of her. The steady beep of the heart monitor the only thing letting him know she was alive when she lay still as death, barely breathing. He fisted his hands and his expression hardened with determination. “I won’t,” he said grimly. Before Bruce could get in another word he summoned the suit to him and got into the metal casing. Bruce’s face flickered onto his screen, with the familiar blue interface laid out on top of it. “Get the kid back to SHIELD, get the rest of the Avengers and meet me at the Hydra base.” Tony looked towards the distance and with the suit’s cameras he could just see it – the fortress of stone on a hill, jutting out over the treetops. 

Bruce knew Tony too well to argue, and he let out a heavy sigh instead. “I really hope Natasha isn’t going to murder me for letting you fly off into Hydra HQ by yourself." 

A thought crossed Tony’s mind and he said, “That reminds me – don’t let Natasha come with the rest of the team."

Bruce shook his head, letting out a short, humorless laugh. “You know Natasha, she won’t let anything keep her back."

“She listens to Clint, and Steve,” Tony said. “It’s too dangerous here."

“She’s capable, you know,” Bruce said pointedly.

“I know that,” Tony bit back. “It’s that she was almost blown up literally a week ago."

Bruce exhaled. “Fine, I’ll try, but no promises. You know that nobody can tell Natasha what to do when she’s set her mind to it. Kinda like someone else I know, for that matter."

Tony gave a wry smile. “Get backup, and meet me at the fortress. I’ll be linked in on the intercom.” With that, he activated the blasters and sped towards the fortress that rose forebodingly in the distance.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait again. I decided to combine two chapters to make up for that.  
> The fic is nearing its ending though and I'll try to finish it before the end of the year. No promises though.


	16. Chapter 16

News that the Avengers were back buzzed through SHIELD's halls with determination. Spreading along with them was the rumor that Iron Man wasn't with them. As soon as Natasha caught wind of it, from the whispered words behind her door and from the nurse she threatened it out of, she yanked the tubes out from her arms and nose, stumbled out of bed and changed . Her usual suit wasn't in the room, so she made do with the tank top, pants, and leather jacket folded on a chair. The same chair Tony had sat in when she was unconscious.

Dressed in her own clothes, Natasha felt that she was more than halfway to recovery and marched out into the hallway. She was supposed to be off duty for another two days, but she was the Black Widow, and when she was on a mission there was nothing that could stop her. She knew that Tony would go straight to her when he got back, being the overprotective boyfriend he was, and his absence from her side added to the sense of unease in her gut, planted by the rumor of his disappearance.

"Where're the Avengers?" She grabbed a low-ranking agent and snapped.

"M-meeting, with the Director," the young man stammered, pale-faced. He'd probably heard no shortage of stories about her during her training – a few years ago when Clint was training a group of new recruits, he told them that anyone who failed their tests would have private sessions in combat and espionage with the Black Widow, and over time the tale had evolved into her hunting down and killing unworthy agents.

"Where?" she demanded.

"Small conference room, third floor." Before he was done speaking she was striding down the hallway towards the stairs.

"Nat!" A voice behind her made her stop and turn. It was Clint, half-running to catch up to her. "I was looking for you in your room," he said. "Should have guessed that you wouldn't stay in it a second longer than necessary."

"What happened? Where's Tony?" she demanded.

"Tracking down Hydra," he answered. "Let's get to the conference and hope Cap lets you in."

"He knows better than to try keeping me out," she muttered and Clint gave a dry chuckle.

When Steve saw Natasha marching in through that door with Clint, his only response was a facepalm while Thor discreetly slipped Bruce ten dollars. Coulson was there, along with the rest of the Avengers, sans Tony. Natasha and Clint took their seats. "Now that we're all here," Coulson began, "Shall we?" He made a gesture that invited the Steve to speak.

"Not really my story to tell," he said. "Bruce?"

Bruce started, almost like a daydreaming schoolboy who didn't expect to be called on. Then he leaned forward, arms on the table, and looked every inch the controlled scientist he was. In an even tone he told them what happened in Sokovia – the Hydra safe house, the young Hydra agent, learning about Hydra's base and Tony flying off to take it down.

"You let Tony go alone to – " Natasha began, but shook her head to clear it. She was an agent, and she couldn't let her feelings get in the way of what was important. Even if her boyfriend was an idiot who was determined to go out in a flame of heroic bravado. "Never mind. How do you know that Hydra agent wasn't lying?"

"He looked ready to piss his pants when Tony scared it out of him," Bruce answered.

"Agent May interrogated him when they got back," Coulson added. "She believes him."

Natasha nodded, satisfied. Melinda May was the best interrogator at SHIELD; Natasha knew from first-hand experience, as well as from watching her work. If May thought he was telling the truth then so did Natasha.

"So what now?" Clint spoke up.

"We go to Sokovia and back Tony up," Steve replied.  _Or collect his body_. The thought ran through Natasha's mind and she suppressed a shiver. Tony would be fine, she told herself. He'd gotten out of far worse than this, and without the Avengers.

"One does not simply walk into Sokovia!" Clint said dramatically and Natasha laughed despite her worries, catching Bruce's eye as the scientist chuckled.

"We attack the fortress from the forest surrounding it," Steve said commandingly. "Take out the guards around it. Then we move on to the fortress itself."

"They'll have defenses," Natasha said, raising an eyebrow. As much as she wanted to take down Hydra's core, she wasn't optimistic about their chances.

"Yup." Steve's eyes glimmered. "That's where the Hulk comes in." Bruce ducked his head, abashed. "We hit them heavy, get past their defenses. Thor and the Hulk will be our main muscle – stay outside and keep the guards busy. Clint, you find a hidden spot and pick off the Hydra goons. Nat and I will get into the fortress and take down Strucker and get Tony."

"We'll pull all other field agents out of their missions," Coulson added. "There aren't much of them, not like the way it used to be, but it'll be better than nothing."

Steve gave a nod of gratitude. "Have some of them stationed in the square for evacuation. With the roads blocked because of the protests going on, there'll be a lot of civilians trapped in the square without anywhere to go if things turn ugly."

If Coulson was offended or put off by this use of his agents he didn't show it. In fact he looked pleased that Steve was prioritizing the safety of the civilians. "We'll get a team for that. And the rest can be your backup. And we'll have a med team on standby – you'll probably need one."

"Thank you," Steve said. He turned to Natasha with a look of exasperation. "There's no point in telling you to stay here, is there?"

"None whatsoever," she replied.

He sighed, a trace of fondness seeping through. "Fine. Let's go get your boyfriend out of trouble, and take down the world's top terrorist organization while we're at it."

* * *

Natasha grabbed the Hydra agent's gun, pointed it up as he pulled the trigger, and slammed its barrel into his head. He fell. Hands grabbed her from behind. She kicked her assailant's legs out from under him. But he didn't loosen his grip and they both fell, scrambling on the snowy ground for a few minutes before she rammed her elbow against the hollow of his throat. His grip relaxed immediately. She leapt to her feet and kicked at his jaw for good measure, not knowing or caring if he was dead or simply unconscious.

Their attack was going exactly as they had planned it. The Hydra agents coming at them from the fortress were numerous, yes, but definitely within what they could handle as a team. Had she been thinking more clearly Natasha would have recognized that as the tell-tale sign that something was amiss. Instead, she was misguided by the adrenaline rush of battle, by anxiety for Tony, and by the success of their plan. A dangerous combination.

"Nat," Steve said over the intercom. "See that gate at the side on the south of the fortress?" She looked in the direction he indicated. It was a small gate, narrow as a forgotten alley, a small distance away from the centre of the battle.

"Yeah," she answered.

"That's how we'll get in. Meet me there in two minutes." Steve commanded.

Natasha started running. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Steve, further away from the gate than she, lift his shield and Thor struck it with Mjolnir. The energy of the blow rippled out and the throng of Hydra agents around them fell. It gave Steve the window he needed to start towards the gate.

Natasha was almost at the gate. She heard footsteps behind her and turned ready to defend herself, but the Hydra goon fell down with an arrow sticking out of him. Clint. When Natasha looked up to find him he had already concealed himself in his hiding spot. "Thanks Hawkeye," she said to him over the intercom, trusting him to cover her until she got to the gate.

She was nearing the edge of the battlefield, and this last dash across the snow, even if it was a short distance, would be conspicuous. She'd have to be fast. She sprinted as fast as she could towards the unguarded gate, her boots churning up snow and dirt. She was aware of Steve on the edges of her vision, coming up from behind her a few meters to her right, streaking across the open ground. He got there moments before her and had just opened the gate when she got there. They ran through and when Natasha chanced a glance behind her shoulder, she saw three or four Hydra agents dead in the snow behind her, each marked with a single arrow.

She and Steve leaned against the walls on either side of the gate, breathing hard from their sprint. "Ready?" he said after a moment's respite and she nodded. She fell into step at Steve's four o'clock, gun at the ready. They climbed the stone staircase that led up from the gate. It curved along the face of the cliff, leading to what Natasha could see was a courtyard of sorts. As they turned up the final part of the staircase they saw two guards stationed at its end. Steve threw his shield at the one on the left, knocking him out, and Natasha threw a knife at the one on the right. They both went down with barely a sound and Steve grabbed his shield as it bounced back towards him and Natasha retrieved her knife from the body. They looked at each other, agreement passing between them, and continued.

In the middle of the courtyard was the fortress itself. They had emerged in the back end of the courtyard, and this section of it was largely empty, though the snow was streaked with brown from where footsteps disturbed it. But Natasha could hear sounds from the opposite end where Hydra soldiers were no doubt moving down to the battlefield or firing from their vantage point on the cliff. The entrance to the fortress was on the side of the building; if they tried getting in they would be seen. They would have to take out the soldiers first.

Steve signaled for Natasha to go around the other way and she nodded, gun drawn, and moved around the right of the building while Steve took the left. Natasha rounded the corner a split second before Steve did and shot down two of the surprised Hydra agents. The rest retaliated and she took cover behind the corner, catching a glimpse of Steve punching out the closest ones. Natasha reloaded and ducked back out of her spot, shot at a couple more as a third grabbed her and she used his weight to fling him off the edge of the cliff. Another charged at her from behind; she spun around just in time to see Steve's shield connect with the back of his head and he went limp.

She gave a nod of thanks. From here she could see the battle below – Thor had climbed onto some wooden tower and was summoning lightning. The Hulk was a green blur of rage, tearing a path of destruction through the Hydra soldiers. As for Clint, she couldn't see him from up here, which was a good sign that he was hidden. "Let's go." She turned around from the cliff to the fortress that loomed above them. It seemed to be part of the hill itself, its bricks made of the same grey stone as the cliff. It blocked out the sun and cast a shadow over this part of the courtyard; she shivered despite her heat-regulating suit.

She rounded to the side of the structure, where the doors were, and pulled at them. They swung open with a groan that she was sure would reverberate through the entire building and announce their presence. She reloaded both her guns and stepped into the gloom of the fortress. That was fine; she was ready for whatever was coming her way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait and for the mreh quality. The story's climax is in the next two or three chapters.


	17. Chapter 17

In retrospect, Tony mused, rushing into Hydra's base as a one-man army was probably not a great idea. It was an act of pure bravado, flying in with guns blazing and the sun glancing off his red-and-gold armor. His plan – or lack of one, since it consisted of blasting them with everything he had – had gone splendidly – for about ten minutes. As soon as he lost the element of surprise, Hydra reacted and retaliated – fairly quickly he had to admit. They brought out their big guns and he was out-gunned. He let himself be captured; he knew that fighting would end with him being blown up and while he might be reckless and almost as self-loathing as Bruce, he didn't actively try to get himself killed.

Right now, though, trapped in a cell in the Hydra base, getting killed seemed pretty likely unless Bruce showed up sometime soon with the rest of the Avengers. It was a long drive back to the SHIELD base in Austria, fair enough, but surely it wouldn't take them long to fly out here. Steve would make sure they got a move on; even if he liked thinking and planning, he was a soldier and he would always take action. Eventually.

For now, though, Tony was stuck in this cell. Clearly Hydra didn't keep prisoners in their fortress. As a prison it was rather medieval – a tiny cell with stone walls and bars, possibly a remnant from the castle's distant past. It was the lowest of low tech, but strong enough to work, at least for mortals. Tony was pretty sure these bars wouldn't stand a chance against Thor. But there were other ways to break out of his cell than with brute force. All Tony had to do was wait for his chance to escape. Either that, or wait for Bruce to bust him out of here. As time passed without a single guard coming to check on him and thus open the gate, the latter option was becoming more and more likely. And Tony didn't like sitting on his hands waiting for things to happen.

He wasn't sure whether the lack of attention was a good thing or not. On the one hand, it meant that he wasn't going to get beaten up again. The injuries from the last time still stung. His blood was crusting on his skin but the wounds hurt afresh when he picked at it. On the other, though, their not coming meant that he couldn't get out of here. He decided that it was way past time that he stopped waiting for a chance and started making his own opportunity to get out of here.

* * *

Natasha looked up from the bodies of the two guards she took out. They were stationed in front of a door, and that alone would have rang warning bells in her head even if the Sokovian word for "KEEP OUT" was not printed on the door. "Steve?" she said.

The captain jogged down the corridor behind her. "Nothing on that end," he said.

"They were guarding something," she said.

"Nat, you sure you want to go poking in there?" Steve cautioned.

Her fists tightened. "For all we know it could be where they're keeping Tony." Or where they're torturing him, she added silently. She prayed that that wouldn't be what she found, that she would find him unharmed and, most importantly, alive. She walked up to the big metal door. There was a keypad next to it, clearly a passcode was needed to enter. She cursed under her breath.

That was when the door slowly slid open and something from within clinked metallically in a sound that was familiar enough to make hope flutter in her belly. She peered at the figure who approached from the dimly lit room. A pair of ice blue slits glowed like eyes. It stepped towards her and the feeble light caught its red and gold plating. "Tony?" she breathed.

Iron Man stepped out of the dark room, and lunged at her with repulsors aimed at her head.

* * *

Tony was halfway through picking the lock – a futile attempt with the flimsy wire he found – when the door opened.

He saw the silhouette of the man who entered and removed his piece of wire from the lock. But he wasn't fast enough because the man saw it and said, "Think you're going somewhere, Stark?" His accent was American and Tony felt dread deep in his stomach.

"Obviously not," he returned, his tone much more casual than he felt.

The Hydra agent stepped into the light and Tony recognized Jensen. His cold, confident smirk made the dread sink deeper into Tony, anchoring him. "I'd heard about you, you know," Jensen said, "Back when I was working for SHIELD. Know about the stuff you did, better than most. I thought the same thing they all did – the you're a genius. So tell me, why did you wander into here all by yourself? Without your team of Earth's Mightiest Heroes or whatever to back you up?"

Tony shrugged, faking nonchalance. This was a game he was good at, even disheveled, hungry, and on the wrong side of bars. "If you know about me you might know that I don't play well with others."

"So that's it?" Jensen's brow furrowed. "You wanted all the glory for yourself?"

"Yeah, well," Tony said, "I don't exactly want to share it with a spandex-wearing senior citizen."

Jensen laughed at that. "Fair enough, not sure I would want to either."

That was when a thought entered Tony's head. _This is going to backfire horribly_ , he thought, and said. "No, you wouldn't. You're doing something worse."

"What?" Jensen narrowed his eyes, uncomprehending.

Tony's heart was pounding but he maintained an air of apathy. "You're not sharing glory, you're not getting any of it at all. Yeah, you're doing all this shit for Hydra, but really, who's going to know about you? Schmidt, Pierce, Whitehall, Von Strucker – those are the guys who get the glory, you know. The ones who will be remembered. The rest of you running around doing errands for them like dogs – no one knows about you. You're not going to be remembered."

Jensen sprang up and slammed a fist against the bars. "Shut up!" His snarl echoed through the dungeon.

"You know it's true," Tony said. It was working, his plan was working. He just needed to keep calm.

"No it's not!" Jensen snapped. "That's what it was like in SHIELD. No one sees you. You're invisible, like a gear in a cog. Not even my trainer… she dropped my training just like _that" –_ he snapped his fingers – "to go spy on _you_."

"Natasha," Tony breathed, the newfound knowledge settling on him with a chill.

Unaware of his audience's reaction Jensen continued, "SHIELD doesn't treat you like a person. Hydra does. I get congratulated personally after a mission. Not asked to report like an emotionless robot. But maybe that's why you like SHIELD so much, huh? Cause you're as emotionless as your robots."

Tony forced down the anger that rose inside him like bubbling lava that threatened to spill out in dagger-like words. The indignation could wait. He would have a chance soon. "They're just better at manipulating you," he said aloud. Even as he forced a calm tone he could feel the tension, the pent up indignation that underlay his casual words. "In the end, they don't care if it's you or another one of their minions doing the dirty work. All they care about is if _someone_ has done it – someone expendable. Like your recent little trip to the Czech Republic? Romanoff and Barton could easily have taken you out, too, just like they took out all your comrades. Think Hydra would have cared if you made it back or not?"

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Jensen rushed at the gate. He unlocked it, his hands fumbling with the key, and Tony scrambled to his feet. His idea worked – at least so far. Now all he needed to do was to carry out his plan and hope that Jensen wasn't half as good a fighter as Natasha was. As Jensen slammed the gate open and moved to grab him, Tony moved out of the way. Jensen was good, as good as any student of Natasha's would be, but he was blinded by rage.

He grabbed at Tony but the genius scrambled to the opposite side of the cell. When Jensen came at him again Tony dodged his tackle and slammed a fist into his back. Jensen spun around faster than Tony anticipated and grabbed the front of his shirt. Tony brought up his arms to block the blow. Jensen dropped him on the floor and he kicked out the other man's legs and scrambled to his feet. Jensen reached fro his legs but was a second too slow and Tony stomped on his fingers, making him howl.

He had gotten past Jensen and he ran for the bars. He got out of the cell and slammed the gate behind him, but Jensen had gotten there too and put his foot in the doorway. The two men grappled, Tony trying to force the gate shut and Jensen to open it. The Hydra agent's fingers reached between the bars, scratching at Tony's face and hands.

Then all of a sudden the gate slammed shut and Jensen was wailing in pain. Blood was flowing from his nose, which was crooked in a way that suggested it was broken. Tony turned around to see the young woman standing in the doorway of the dungeon. Her dark hair hung about her, standing out against her pale skin and scarlet jacket. She gave a smile that was more deranged than comforting. In Slavic-accented English, she said, "I've been waiting for this, Mr Stark."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for putting up with late updates time and time again :P   
> Shoutout to La Madone on fanfiction.net who gave me the idea of what happens to Tony! Your idea was much better than mine.


	18. Chapter 18

Natasha rolled out of the way as beams blasted at where she had been seconds ago. She heard the sound of metal on metal as Steve's shield bounced off its back. She got to her feet to see the super soldier dodge a blow, defect a repulser beam with his shield, and deliver an uppercut with its edge. Iron Man staggered back and Natasha took the chance to fire at him. The bullets bounced off the titanium armor uselessly.

Iron Man spun around to look at her and as Natasha met the empty gaze of those neon eye slits she realized, _the suit's been hacked_. Tony wasn't in there, she knew. She wasn't sure if there was anyone in there, but she would bet that there wasn't. Hydra had taken the suit, hacked into it, and would use it… "They were going to send it out into the battle. Make us fight it." She ducked a blow from a metal fist and kicked at its legs but that didn't make it budge. At the same time Steve rammed a fist into the side of its metal torso. It blasted at him and he blocked with the shield. "What?" he demanded.

"They've hacked into the suit and they're going to set it on us," Natasha explained as she darted out of the armor's reach. "The Avengers fighting outside."

"Oh God," Steve muttered. The suit raised its palms to fire at her and she scrambled out of the way. Steve threw the shield again, this time towards her and she caught it to slam it against the suit's metal jaw.

"We need to take it down," she said, delivering blows with the shield, the only thing tough enough to make the suit stagger. She tossed the shield back towards Steve before dodging a metal fist. "Hack back into it."

Steve caught the shield and slammed it hard against the suit, drawing its attention from Natasha. "Can you do that?" he asked, blocking a pair of repulser beams.

"Think so." Taking advantage of the suit's momentary distraction, she took a running start, leapt up to Iron Man's back and fired the Widow's Bite into its neck. Short circuited, it dropped to the floor, motionless.

"Is it down?" Steve asked, panting.

"Not going to stay that way long," Natasha answered breathlessly. "The circuit's fried for now but we have about… seven minutes if we're lucky, before the backup powers up." She dropped to the floor and ripped the face plate off. Just like she had known, the suit was empty inside. She knew even before putting the helmet on that she wouldn't be able to hack back in from the suit itself; she needed to access the computer Hydra used to override JARVIS with their own system. "Maybe…" She headed towards the room where the suit appeared from. It was a hunch, but her years of experience taught her to trust her gut. They kept her alive and got the job done.

It was a lab of sorts, and in some sick way reminded her of Tony's workshop. There were wires and engineering equipment everywhere, and a coiling mass of wires were linked to a computer to the side of the room. No doubt that was where they had attached the Iron Man suit to the computer. "Steve, can you get that suit in here?" she called. Steve answered in the affirmative and she got to work.

They attached the suit to the computer once again. As Natasha wiped the system to replace it with JARVIS once again, she tried keeping the worry at bay but it gnawed at her stomach. She had kept from worrying about Tony by telling herself that his suit was more than enough to protect him. But now he was parted from it, and she knew that he wouldn't do that without a fight. He viewed the suit as part of him and it would be like parting from an arm or leg for him – a last resort. What did they do to him to get him out of it? Torture him, burn him, electrify him? They might have removed his body –

No. She couldn't think about it that way. Tony had to be alive. He had left his armor voluntarily because he had no choice. He must have done it to safe his life, and she had to believe that it worked. Even when outside the suit, he was a mortal man. Unlike Steve, or herself, who were enhanced, he was very much human. Sometimes, between his brilliant mind and his impenetrable suit, she forgot how vulnerable he was. How very… breakable.

She shoved those thoughts aside when the suit's eye slits flickered to life with blue light. "Sir?" came JARVIS's uncertain voice, if AIs could show emotion.

"Oh thank God," she breathed. "Welcome back, JARVIS."

"Agent Romanoff." There was relief in JARVIS's voice, too. "Captain Rogers."

"Track Tony's vital signs," Natasha ordered. "Where is he? Is he alive?" She removed the headpiece and put it on. The screen was blank except for the pixellated image of the room they were in. Then several bars and charts came on and Natasha let out a breath as she noted them as Tony's vital signs.

"Mr Stark is alive," JARVIS confirmed. "His coordinates are on the screen."

"Don't suppose you have a map of this building," Natasha said, hardly daring to hope.

"Unfortunately I do not." JARVIS sounded apologetic. "But Mr Stark is underground."

"Dungeon," Steve noted. "That's sinister."

"Thanks, JARVIS," Natasha said before removing the helmet. To Steve she said, "I'm going to find him. You get back out there and –"

"No way," Steve interrupted. "We stick together. Tony's gonna be mad when he knows that I didn't tie you down in SHIELD's base and force you to stay; he's going to kill me if I leave you alone in Hydra's base."

Natasha allowed a sardonic smile. "Fair point. But let me go after my boyfriend. You need to find Von Strucker and take him in or take him down, or this whole attack on Hydra would have been for nothing." From Steve's furrowed brow, she knew that her point struck home.

After a long while he said heavily, "Fine. But don't do anything dumb – just get Tony and get out of here. No bravado."

"Please," she said wryly, "I'm not one to play the hero."

* * *

Ten minutes later, she and Steve arrived at the top of a long, narrow staircase. She had given orders for JARVIS to pilot the suit and join the fight outside; Tony might not be in it but the suit's capacity as a weapon would be welcomed by the rest of their team outside the fortress. "I guess this is where I'm going down," she said.

"And I'm going to find Von Strucker," Steve replied. He looked at her with a mix of emotions, like there was something he wanted to say but couldn't. "Be careful, Nat," he finally said. "Find Tony and get out of here safe. Both of you."

She nodded. "You too. Don't do anything stupid." Without looking back at the super soldier, she descended the staircase, down to the deepest parts of the fortress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally meant to be part of the last chapter, but I felt that that was getting too long. Next chapter's going to be good, I promise.


	19. Chapter 19

_He's standing at the bottom of a staircase, and the steps are filled with men, women and children who stab him with their merciless, unseeing eyes. The stairs are slick with their blood. He has never seen them before, but he knows them. He knows all of them. They are the dead. They are_ his _dead – he killed them._

_His feet move towards them of their own accord, even though he is horrified by the masses of those he has killed with his bombs, his guns, his orders. "I'm sorry," he says as he walks amongst the dead. "I'm sorry," he tells the fallen soldiers. "I'm sorry," he says to the war orphans. "I would change things, if I could go back. Change things so you wouldn't have to die." They give him no response except for the cold condemnation in their eyes._

_A familiar face, one he knows not by instinct but by memory, appears in the crowd. "Yinsen?" He struggles through the unyielding bodies to the older man. "Yinsen!" The professor gives no sign of recognition, of even seeing Tony at all. Tony grabs his shoulders. "I'm sorry," he says fervently. "You're a better man than me and you deserved to walk out of that cave. You should have lived instead of me, and I'm sorry. I hope you know that." Yinsen stares right through him with his dead eyes, a silent accusation._

_Tony continues up the staircase. The blood on the steps is running thicker now and deeper; he has to be careful not to slip and fall. Those around him are no longer those he has killed, but those he has yet to. Through accident or purpose or failure, these people will die because of him. The knowledge has a choke hold on him and he's struggling to breath, like he's drowning in blood. "I'm sorry," he keeps saying, chanting it like a mantra as he struggles up the steps. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm –" He breaks off when he sees the faces at the top of the stairs._

_Clint's eyes are glassy and sightless. Hie bow hands limply by his side and his quiver is empty. Thor stands next to him, and something is wrong about seeing the Asgardian god so defeated and spiritless. Steve is there too, expressionless and uncaring, his shield split in two at his feet. Behind him, Bruce gives no sign of defiance, nor a hint of anger, nor even self-deprecation. "No no no no." Tony can't stop himself from running up the stairs, his feet slipping in the blood and he has to grab ahold of the dead, of those yet to die, to stop himself from falling. "Steve, no, Clint, Thor… Bruce!" None of them move or give a sign of recognition. They all simply look straight ahead, their unseeing eyes seeming to fix on him in harsh judgement._

_And behind them on the penultimate step is the one whose presence Tony's dreaded all along, the one whose accusation matter the most. "Natasha," Tony chokes out. She's staring at him with the same impersonal coldness as the others, and it cuts deep into him. Breathing is heart, even his heartbeats, the only living thing in this dead landscape,( throb painfully. He cups her jaw, and his hand rests against her pulse point, the spot that he has kissed and sucked on countless times in their lovemaking. It is devoid of a pulse and Tony feels as though his own heart has stopped beating._

_All of a sudden her eyes flare to life and burn with hatred. He doesn't know which is worse, her impassiveness or her loathing. "You could have saved us," she says in a voice harsh as the nipping of frost. The truth of the words plunge into him like a knife straight into his heart._

* * *

Gun cocked, Natasha made her way down the final flight of stairs to the dungeon. According to JARVIS, Tony was down here and if she was lucky, he would be unguarded. Natasha had learned not to rely on luck, the most fickle of all things. The descending steps had turned, first in sharp corners with landings, then as she got deeper became a twisted, curving corridor. There were no lights, and she felt her way down the stairs with one hand against the stone wall. She must be deep underground by now; she was raised in an underground training facility, and she could always tell when she was below the surface. It was in the damp air, the oppressive sense of the earth above her head.

She reached the bottom step. The wall that made the staircase a tunnel stopped the light from reaching her and hid her from whoever was on the other side. If Tony was alone, she would free him and they would leave together. If he was guarded, she would take out the guard. If there was an army waiting for her… well, the sensible thing to do would be to turn tail and run while shooting at as many of them as she could. She probably would try to fight through all of them, though, especially if Tony was there.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the light.

There was no army, no guard. The first thing Natasha noticed was Jensen, locked in a cell. The second hunched over outside its gate. He was rocking back and forth, eyes squeezed shut. She felt a stab of pain in her heart, feeling his pain like it was hers. It was quickly squashed by anger at whoever had done this to him.

Then, and only then, did she notice the woman standing in the shadows. The brunette sighed as though Natasha was an inconvenience, and waved her hand in an almost dismissive gesture.

All Natasha could see as she fell to her knees was _red_.

* * *

_Red. Red like her hair. Red like blood. Red like the Room._

_She knows what will happen before it does, because it has happened before and she knows that this is a memory but as in a nightmare she cannot stop it. She can only play the part that's been assigned to her. Which is to try to stop it from happening. She will inevitably fail._

_The little girl's hand is damp in her own as they crouch behind the sleeping truck. Frightened blue eyes meet hers and she puts a finger to her lips to tell the girl to quiet. A whispered word, a scuffle of the foot, even a too-loud breath, and they would be discovered and they would both die._

_Voices come closer. The sound of boots on dead leaves. The beam of flashlights probing into dark corners and rendering them unsafe. A man says in Russian, "that bitch must be here. Don't let her get away." His voice is like rusty steel. Natasha is aware of how loud her breathing is, how loud Sophie's is. They will be caught. They will be caught and they will both die. And it will be her fault, because if she had just given the girl over to the Red Room at least they would be alive._

_She doesn't know why she purposefully disobeyed her orders. The parameters were simple – get the assassinated ambassador's daughter and bring her back to the Room. But instead, she took the girl and ran. Maybe because she cannot bear watching another girl having her identity stripped and becoming no more than a weapon. Maybe because she knows that this child,_ any _child, deserves better than the non-life that will be forced onto her by the Room. Maybe it's simply because she's young and reckless and in a rebellious phase against her guardians and handlers. Whatever the reason, they will both pay for her disobedience._

_They can't sit here like sitting ducks waiting to be found. They will be, if they don't get out of here soon. But she also knows what will happen if they do. Nevertheless, history replays and she is unable to stop herself from putting her mouth to Sophie's ear and whispering, "Run when I tell you." The girl nods and the dread sinks deep in Natasha's stomach._

_She lets go of Sophie's hand and motions for her to stay. She waits until the men's flashlights shine in the opposite direction, and under the cover of darkness she runs in a crouch to the cover of the next truck. She barely ducks behind it before the beam of a flashlight shoots at the empty space between the two trucks. Her heart is pounding. When the men are looking the other way again, she motions for Sophie to run. The girl does, across the two meters of open ground and barrels into Natasha's arms. The assassin's heart thuds in relief. They can do this. Run from truck to truck, car to car, until they reach the buildings that border the lot. There are only three more gaps between the rows of vehicles. If they make it out of the lot, they will have a chance._

_Deep in her heart, she knows with anguished apathy that they will never make it out._

* * *

_He tears his gaze away from Natasha's face, hard as marble with condemnation, and looks beyond her. Awaiting him at the top of the steps, on a raised dais like an island in the middle of a river of blood, is an elaborate throne made of black stone. It is adorned with carvings, detailing battle scenes and gods of war. It stands erect, overlooking the dead. His dead, those he has killed and those he has yet to._

_From the shadows behind the throne emerges a figure. At first Tony can't make out the features, but the humanoid steps out from the smoke of gunpowder and explosions, and its_ _shapeless figure sharpens into a sickeningly familiar one. Broad, masculine shoulders, a strong chest tapering into a portly waist. Tony knows who it is before the facial features are visible. He backs up, tries going back down the stairs – but it is impossible, the blood on the floor is up to his calves and the steps are too slippery for a descent, unless he wants to fall and drown in the blood he has spilled. "Where are you trying to go?" says Howard Stark._

_"I don't want to be here," Tony says. His voice is barely more than a pathetic whimper. He is aware of how childish his plea is. "I want to go home."_

_Howard gestures at the throne as though he's showing off his latest invention at an expo. His words send a chill down Tony's spine. "You_ are _home, Anthony."_

_"No!" Tony can't help shouting in revulsion. He tries to back up, but the blood is rapidly rising behind him. There is nowhere to go but forward, trudging through the blood he has spilled. All about him the blood rises, filling the cavernous throne-room fast from an unseen source; from the ground perhaps. It slaps against Tony impatiently as though it is trying to drag him down to drown in their depths. Maybe that's what he deserves. But he still wades forward, waist-high in the sea of blood. The only safe place to go is the raised dais. If not, soon he will be swimming in blood. As he reaches the dais Howard leans down and grabs his arm, dragging him onto the raised platform. Tony isn't sure if it's to help him, or to stop him from leaving. Maybe both._

_Blood-soaked from the waist down, Tony looks about the chamber, where the blood rolls in stormy waves. "How do you not want this?" Howard says with incredulity. "All of this" – he waves his hand in a gesture that encompasses the sea of blood, the throne room, the elaborate throne in its center – "this is yours. This is your home, Tony, where you belong. This is your legacy." The thick blood is rising in furious waves, churning about the chamber and splashing onto the dais, staining it burgundy. Howard's voice is chillingly calm, a contradiction to the raging storm that is playing beneath the sea of blood. "The Stark legacy."_

* * *

_They are behind the last truck, and with one last run over open ground they will be out of the lot and free. Maybe they have a chance at this after all. The younger Natasha's heart leaps with hope, but her future self is weighed down with weary dread._

_She prepares to run, crouched in the shade of the last truck and eyes the stretch of gravel between her and the edge of the complex. The area is blanketed in darkness. The men are coming closer, their time is running out. They might not have time to cross one by one. "We run together, alright?" she whispers to Sophie, who nods, blue eyes fearful but trusting at the same time. Natasha grips Sophie's hand in her own and together they dash across the final gap between them and freedom –_

BANG!

_She's not sure which of them screamed. But Sophie sinks down to the ground, her legs trembling, a hand pressed against the hole in her stomach._

_"No. No no no no no." Natasha kneels next to the little girl. "Stay with me, Sophie." Even as she cradles the girl's torso in her arms she knows that she's dying. She presses hard against the bullet wound even though it's not going to do anything. "Look at me, Sophie," she says, cupping the girl's cheek. "You're going to be okay, I promise. Just stay with me. I'll make sure you're okay." She's blabbering, knowing that this child, whom she had taken onto herself to protect, is dying and it's her fault her fault her fault. If she had just handed her over to the Room she would still be alive. Living a terrible life, but even that had to be better than this – shot and dying in a parking lot in the middle of the night like a trespassing dog._

_Sophie's breathing is shallow. "Am I dying?" The breath of a whisper is all she can manage. Her forehead is wrinkled in pain._

_Natasha knows what she will answer: "You'll be safe soon." But before she can say the words, Sophie says something she didn't the first time: "You could have saved me."_

_Natasha feels violently disoriented, like the floor has caved in under her feet and she is trapped in those indeterminate seconds where there is nothing but air between her feet and the ground. This isn't supposed to happen. There isn't supposed to be an accusation. In the first lifetime Sophie dies peacefully like a sleeping angel, forever pure and untouched, and Natasha meekly goes back with the men sent to kill them and is punished like a disobedient mutt._

_"I know." Natasha's voice breaks and the tears come. Sophie's chest has stopped rising and falling and her eyes are open in an eternal helpless accusation. Natasha clutches at her tiny body. "I know, and I'm so sorry. I should have taken care of you. Protected you. You deserved to live, not to… to die like this."_

_"She did." The gruff voice comes above her and she looks up from the ground to see her Soviet handler. Ivanchenko growls, "Look at what you did, Romanova. Thought you could give her more than he Room can. Thought you knew better when you can't even come close to understanding how we superiors think. How we make our plans, for her as much as for you."_

_He looks with disdain at the cooling body of the child. "Such a waste." He turns to Natasha and his lip is curled. It is not even hatred; that intensity of emotion is not worth bestowing on someone as insignificant as her. It is, at most, distaste and mockery. "And all because you thought you could play the game like the rest of us when you're nothing more than a pawn."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for nightmarish sequences where your favorite characters are tortured? :D
> 
> Tony's hallucination in this chapter is heavily based off the one in Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man series, with some minor changes. Natasha's hallucination is my headcanons for one of the many events that led to her defection.
> 
> The next chapter ties very closely to this one, and I wanted to finish writing that before I uploaded this, hence the long-ish wait (seriously though, there have been worse waits). Since that is pretty much done I'll try to upload it within the week.


	20. Chapter 20

_Howard Stark stands on the dais as a sea of blood rages beneath them, furious as the spirits of the dead, violent as the bloodthirsty gods of war. "This is your legacy," he says. "The Stark legacy."_

_Those words descend into Tony's heart, freezing it with fear in the way only the most unsettling and undeniable of truths can. Yes, he is a Stark, and what more are Starks than men who dipped their hands in blood; bathed and swam in it for money or power or fame? Just like blood in their veins, the blood on their hands is passed on from father to son. And Tony is a Stark, as much as his father is, perhaps even more because of all the blood he's spilled – in equal measures destroying and protecting the world. He's a Stark, and he has more than lived up to his legacy. The staircase he ascended, he now knows to be his trophy case, proof that he deserves his legacy. This legacy of blood._

_Howard points at the throne. "Take your seat, Tony."_

_Tony looks at the imposing black throne, a throne made for Death to rule over his kingdom. A throne fit for a Stark. He's been a fool for believing that he could be anything else than what his father had been. Blood is in his veins – both his own, pumping blood, and the blood that he has spilled and is destined to spill. All this masked crusading, flying around pretending to be a superhero – it's just him trying to justify that urge within him to kill. Not for money, like his father, but for fame. For those crowds of adoring fans that scream his name, for the flashing cameras, the invitations, the prestige around the Stark name. He can sugarcoat it with justice, but in the end, it's just the same thing as he's always done – spilling blood. Profiting from it. He thought he could forge his own path, be different, but he's lied to himself as much as to the rest of the world._

_Then like a point of clarity amidst the roar of the blood – whether from the storming ocean or in his ears Tony can't tell – a voice, Natasha's voice, saying with quiet conviction,_ "What's real – hold on to that, not the nightmares, not the non-real memories."

_Those words are from a lifetime ago, a time when the world was structured and SHIELD was a solid protector and Tony had never known how it feels to be completed by Natasha. But now, standing on an island in a sea of blood, he is suddenly thrown back to that faraway night. In his mind's eye he can see the darkened bar at the top of Avengers Tower, Natasha sitting opposite him, the lights glinting off their glasses. Them talking about their nightmares. It's a quiet and surreal moment, and they are distant from the world they would give their lives to protect, safe from the horrors they have faced. A safe place._

_He draws from that quiet strength, using it to drive out the worst of his demons – the self-loathing and doubt and cynicism. "No." His voice is timid, like the first hesitant flaps of a bird's wings._

_Howard's rage flares in an instant like an inferno. He the front of Tony's shirt and his legs crumple into a kneel in front of his father, his maker. Howard grabs his son's hair and yanks his head back. "Don't you dare talk back to me, boy! Now take your seat!"_

_For a long, treacherous moment Tony's courage buckles and he is a child again, the little boy who endured his father's insults and blows and never believed that he was good enough to make his father proud. Then he remembers how Natasha gently trails her fingers along his face, her look of wild love when she's on top of him, her sleepy smile that speaks more than words ever can as he hands her her first coffee of the day. They give him the courage he needs, and though his legs shake he forces himself back onto his feet. He stands as tall as he can, and in as strong a voice as he can manage, he snarls at his father, "No. I refuse your legacy."_

_Howard's shock is apparent – he releases his grip on Tony. "NO!" he shouts. "This is who you are! This is who_ we _are!"_

_Tony shakes his head resolutely. "I'm not like you," he insists. Until that moment, he's never quite believed that himself._ _"Not anymore." But as he says the words he knows them to be true. Howard would never have given up the money or fame of being the world's top weapons manufacturer, not even if that could save the world. He would never ride a missile through a worm-hole into space for the sake of a city. He would never change himself to become someone better._

_Howard laughs, a harsh sound that brings more fear than comfort. "You can never change," he says. "There is a sickness inside you, son. Inside all of us. It's too late to escape."_

_"Shut. Up." Tony snarls through gritted teeth. He moves towards the throne – and shoves at the ornate chair. It grates against the dais but Tony persists, until it tips off the dais and into the blood. He watches it sink, his legacy, dissolved by the sins of its making. He turns back to Howard in time to see the old man collapse and fall off the dais into the raging ocean of blood. The waves aren't simply angry, they are made of the blood spilled by the Starks, and they thirst for vengeance. They crash against Howard, trying to drag him into their depths. His grip on the dais is slippery from the blood on it. Tony stands at the edge, towering over him. "I choose my own path." He watches impassively as Howard makes a last struggle to get back on the dais, but is instead pulled by the waves to drown in the blood he has spilled._

_The roar of the sea of blood grows louder, as though it wants to reach Tony, too. There's no escape from it, not in this closed chamber. Maybe there will never be escape from it, from his sins and the sins of his fathers, even though he's chosen a different path. He closes his eyes, prepared to meet his end, and –_

and he opened them to the solid gray stone beneath his feet, the dimness of the Hydra dungeon, and the unmistakable form of Natasha collapsed on the floor mere feet away from him.

* * *

_Ivanchenko's voice is cold with disdain and mockery. "You thought you could play the game like the rest of us," he says, "when you're nothing more than a pawn."_

_Is he right? Is she truly no more than a pawn? She thought she had control when she clearly has none. The proof of that is here – in her arms, the cooling body of a child died too soon. Because of her. Because she thought she could save her when she clearly couldn't. Thought she was wiping out her red when she only stained it even darker. She has always been so stupid. Stupid little Natalia Romanova, who thought she could play the game with the adults when she's no more than a little girl who barely understands the rules._

_She looks at Sophie's little body in her arms, blue eyes dulled but not quite shut. Devoid even of the remnants of her fear. A promise forever unfulfilled. "It's my fault she's dead, isn't it?" Natasha murmurs._

_Ivanchenko gives a sneer in reply and turns on his heels. "Come now, Romanova." He doesn't bother turning around to make sure she obeys – he knows she will. This has happened before, it is history – not repeating, but history itself, and Natasha is reliving it. She had been a pawn in the game before, and she has no choice now but to be a pawn. Like a whipped dog she will follow her master back to her kennel of concrete, of hands cuffed to wrought-iron bed, of fighting her sisters to the death, of becoming more and more a weapon and less and less a human being. She hates it but she has to follow the script. Follow what has happened before. She has no choice._

_Or does she?_

_The thought strikes at her with a force that is almost physical._ "You did what was right, and that's why you've come so far from the person you were." _Those words, from the lips of a man she will not meet for many more years, and will not fall in love with for many more. They are followed by the memory of a kiss – a kiss in a dimly lit bar far in the future as SHIELD, as all she knows of order_ _itself, crumble around her. In a world without commands or superiors, a world where she falls in love with a man who represents everything she is raised to hate, in a world where she has a choice – and she chooses to stay and love instead of run and hide. And maybe, the choice starts now._

_With the realization she she suddenly becomes aware of inhabiting her body, of her own agency over her limbs. She is no longer powerlessly watching things unfold – she can deviate from the script. She looks up from Sophie's body at Ivanchenko's retreating back. "No." The word is barely a whisper on her lips but it snaps Ivanchenko to a halt, as though it is imbued with the most potent of powers. Perhaps it is._

_Ivanchenko turns, shock written all over his face of harshness and punishment. Never has he heard such insolence before, certainly not from one of her kind. The look should have frightened her into submission, but she is fearless now. She pushes at her boundaries, like a bird flapping its wings for the first time and realizing the strength in them. "No," she repeats, unfolding herself from the ground and standing tall. "I will not go back with you."_

_"You've got some gall, Romanova. Mother Russia has given you all you have –"_

_"You've taken everything from me!" She breaks in, anger pulsing in her veins, a fire that cannot be contained. "My childhood, my dreams, my free will. I was nothing, you broke down everything I could have been before I even had it, into nothing so that you can make me into this – this killer I am now. A murderer of children" She gestures at Sophie's limp body. "But I have a choice, now. And I choose to walk away. You can kill me if you want, Ivanchenko. But you can't ever control me."_

_WIth that, she turns around to walk out of the lot, towards freedom. Ivanchenko's livid face, pale with disbelief and contorted with rage, is almost worth the bullet that lodges itself into her back. It hurts: a sharp, burning pain between her shoulder blades, but it reminds her that she is no longer numbed and apathetic, but alive, at least for moments more, and feeling. And rebelling. She lets her eyes drift shut knowing that she dies not a pawn or a mindless killer, but a person with the fire of defiance burning in her heart –_

– and when she opened them, it was no longer Sophie's dead eyes or Ivanchenko's expression of shock and anger that she saw, but the bruised, worried, but very much alive face of her lover crouching over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this whole nightmare sequence and couldn't resist playing around with it for a little longer. But hey, it is absolutely necessary to complete both Tony and Natasha's emotional/psychological journeys! I hope you liked this as much as I do.
> 
> This is the first time I've published a chapter while the next chapter is completely unwritten, and having no idea at all of what will happen next. I guess we'll find out soon!


	21. Chapter 21

Natasha's vision was swimming. She was in the parking lot, in Russia – and then she wasn't, she was somewhere underground, somewhere with stone walls and a stone floor, then she was in a room with wooden floorboards and shimmering with mirrors, she was pirouetting and the Natashas in the mirror pirouetted with her and the room wavered like in a dream, and she was back in the stone chamber –

The images before her eyes wavered, unable to decide where she was. She couldn't trust her anything anymore – nothing was real, not even what her senses were telling her. She couldn't breath. Not like a band was around her chest, but like her lungs had hardened and were unable to expand. She breathed through her mouth, rapid and shallow. Each breath of air was barely in her throat when she exhaled it, before it ever reached her lungs.

"Take a deep breath," a voice said. She didn't know who it was, where it came from, whether it was a friend or foe… or even if it was male or female. "Deep breaths," it said again. So she forced herself to take a deep breath. Forced the oxygen to stay in her body for more than a second before breathing out. Her breathing was shaky, like a shuddering machine too out of use to function smoothly. But still she breathed. Deep breaths, she thought, deep breaths. She had done this before. Had pulled herself out of what was fake and back to what was real. Deep breaths, when the images came back. The images from when they brainwashed –

_No!_ She slammed that door in her mind, blocked out that memory with the force of a mental battering ram. No, don't think about that. Just keep breathing. Deep breaths. Inhale… and exhale. Inhale… and exhale. A conscious act that took all her effort. In, and out. In, and out.

And slowly, her vision began to sharpen, liquid lines solidifying into firm shapes and sharp angles. The room around her – and it was clearly somewhere indoors, somewhere made of stone and smelling like must and earth – swayed slower. And in front of her was Tony's face. She focused on that. On his brown eyes, dark with concern. On the crinkle in the centre of his forehead. On the weight of his hand on her shoulder. "Deep breathes," he was saying, and she watched his lips move. "That's it." Breathing was easier now, required less effort though she still had to concentrate to do it. Her heart was still racing, and her limbs shaking. She was aware that she was lying on the ground, curled up in a fetal position, her arms and legs limp. She slowly pushed herself up, and immediately the room started tossing violently again. She groaned and closed her eyes, and Tony helped her sit up and lean against him. He was warm and solid and she buried her face in his shoulder, eyes half-closed until the lurching became bearable, always conscious of her breathing.

He had his arms around her, one of his hands on her back, the other at the rear of her skull. This was real, she reminded herself forcefully. This was what's real, what's present. _This_ , not the parking lot in Russia, not Sophie's body torn through by a weeping bullet hole, not Ivanchenko's sneering face, not the ballet lessons –

She threw her arms around Tony's neck, shaking. She anchored herself to him, to the present. She didn't know if he understood _why_ she needed it, but she did know that he simply understood the _need_ for it, because he wrapped his arms tighter around her in return and murmured in her ear, "I'm here, Tasha. I'm here."

She was becoming more clear-headed now; she could open her eyes all the way and the room didn't do much more than waver uncertainly, like it didn't think it could get away with rocking again. She drew back to look at Tony, her arms still around him, and examined his wounds. There was a cut on the edge of his lip, dark red with dried blood, and his face was purpling with an assortment of bruises. The sight of his wounds awoke in her an anger that burned away the haze of confusion. She was suddenly fully aware of everything. Her senses sharpened and her mind focused.

Tony clearly saw the anger in her eyes. "Hey," he said, cradling her cheek in a calloused palm. "I'm okay."

"I was coming to rescue you," she said. Her voice was hoarse. Her eyes narrowed. "They hurt you." Her eyes suddenly hardened, there was a shadow of menace in her voice. A promise of violence.

"I'm fine," Tony said. He gave her a once-over. "I'm not so sure about you," he said skeptically.

She flinched at that; she hated how weak she had been, how Tony had just seen what she never wanted anyone to see. "I'll be okay," she said, reassuring herself as much as Tony. She turned her gaze towards the rest of the dungeon. "Where is she?" Natasha demanded. The woman in red had disappeared, like she'd melted into the shadows. The only people there were herself and Tony, and Jenson locked in the cell, apparently unconscious. "Goddammit, where did she go?!" She needed to physically hurt her for what she did to her and to Tony. For making her relive her worst nightmare, and for causing Tony pain beyond anything she had seen in him before. She clambered to her feet, but her legs were too shaky to stand and her knees buckled. She caught herself only by bracing against the stone wall, and by Tony catching her around the waist from where he still crouched on the ground.

She snarled a curse in Russian under her breath, her legs still quivering. Standing wasn't an option, so she let herself sink to the floor again. His arm around her waist, Tony drew her closer to him, tucking her against his body. She felt like she was burning with shame, a heat that started from her chest and stretched over her shoulders, spreading up her throat to her cheeks and down to dull embers in the pit of her belly. She hated how weak she was, how susceptible to these mind games. How easily she was unsettled by that... hallucination. She focused on what came before – the long, dark tunnel leading underground, the Hydra fortress, being attacked by the suit, the battle outside. And Tony – the worry of not knowing if he was alive, the gnawing pessimism that he was dead or being tortured.

"I thought I lost you," she whispered half to herself, pressing a palm against Tony's chest. To remind herself never, ever to take this man for granted again. In the past months she had begun to normalize their relationship, to forget what her life was like without him. The hallucination had reminded her of the price she had to pay to get here, the price in blood. She didn't deserve the happiness, the love, the trust Tony gave her.

"I'm not going anywhere," Tony reassured her. His voice was hoarse. "In fact" – his laugh was hollow – "I don't think either of us can do that right now."

"That little witch," Natasha growled, shoulders tensing once again with anger. Her eyes rested on Jensen's still form behind bars. "What happened to him?"

There was a hint of smugness in Tony's voice. "I beat him up. Shoved him in there."

Natasha managed a shaky smile. "Really? Good work."

Tony's laugh was hollow. "I try. Even though you did end up having to rescue me."

Leaning against him, Natasha craned her head up look at him. "Does that hurt you man-bits? That your girlfriend has to rescue you?"

This time his smile touched his eyes, driving away some of the haunted look in them. "Nah, it just makes me even more in awe of you." And with those words it was Natasha who was awestruck. Her mind was still too scrambled to compose a reply, so she blinked up at him, half-open-mouthed, her heart swelling with affection for this man who was warm and soft underneath a brash exterior of crimson and gold. It was a soothing feeling, like a warm fire in a Russian winter rather than a wildfire blazing through dry bushland. It drove away the remaining vestiges of the cold fear that clamped her down in an uncertainly swaying timeline that disappeared or crossed over itself. It caught her and steadied her when everything and everyone else was trying to topple her.

But she couldn't say all that to him, she didn't have the words. So she kissed him, close-mouthed and grateful and reassuring. His fingers curled under her jaw, his lips telling her that he understood. And that was the final thing that she needed to feel – not _well_ , but well _enough_ that she was halfway functional. She stood up, this time successfully, her legs only slightly wobbly. She'd dealt with worse before. She would live. "Come on," she said, offering her hand to Tony, who took it and she pulled him to his feet. "Let's get that asshole" – she tilted her head towards Jensen, who was starting to regain consciousness – "and get out of here."

"And then," Tony said, squeezing her hand. "We can go home."

"Yes," Natasha agreed, thinking not only of the Tower but of their team. "Home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of work and panic attacks are no fun. A trip to Budapest and Stockholm, though, is.


	22. Chapter 22

The bed was uncomfortable. Tony had been tossing in it for what felt like hours. They had gotten back to the SHIELD base from Sokovia that evening and dealt with the aftermath of what happened at the fortress. Injuries were checked – Clint's bullet wound was bandaged, Tony's many cuts and scrapes were fussed over, and Natasha glared the whole time at the doctor who insisted on checking her injuries from the explosion she was caught in barely a week ago.

Then the team had to report what happened. Who they captured, who got away. They had hit Hydra hard, and most of their soldiers had surrendered or were injured, and taken into SHIELD's custody, including Jensen. Von Strucker, however, managed to get away. "He had help," Steve had said darkly, and recounted a figure moving too fast to be seen but hitting hard and sure. Coulson and May had exchanged knowing glances at this information. Tony didn't like not knowing, and he made a mental note to hack into SHIELD as soon as he could to find out what Coulson was holding back. He was done with authority withholding information, unless it was _his_ information. Then Natasha told them about the woman in red and how she gave them hallucinations, but they didn't give the details of the nightmares, just that she made them lose consciousness and "when we woke up she was gone." Tony had grasped her hand tightly while they recounted that episode, for himself as much as it was for comforting her.

So now, Tony was lying on a too-thin mattress with springs digging into his back, in a tiny room in a resurrected SHIELD base in Austria. They were going to fly out on the quinjet – _his_ quinjet – first thing tomorrow, back to New York. Tony wanted to fly out straight away, but they were all tired from the battle that day, not to mention the past week, and they all needed a good night's sleep. But he knew that he wasn't getting any sleep tonight, though, not when the nightmare were still fresh in his mind and in his senses. He could still fell it – the thick, cloying texture of the blood as he waded through it, how slippery it was underfoot. He could still smell it, like it was grafted into the insides of his nose, a constant burden he had to carry, an acrid reminder of the blood he had spilled, the blood he had yet to spill, in the name of defense. The empty throne, a throne for the god of death, Howard's voice ringing, "This is your legacy." And Natasha's dead face, her lifeless eyes that bore into his with an accusation that could not have been louder if she had screamed at him. No, he wasn't going to get any rest tonight. Even if he did manage to fall asleep, his dreams would be painted with blood.

Tony was debating whether he should give up on the facade of sleep when a slow creak came from the door. He tensed up, on high alert. He wondered if he should get a weapon, grab _something_ to defend himself, but the room was spartan at best. Maybe the lamp would do, if he could –

"Hey." He relaxed at the familiar husky voice. The door opened, and a diminutive figure was silhouetted against the rectangle of gray, before the door shut and they were in darkness once more. "It's me."

"Can't sleep?" Tony said, his quiet voice echoed loud in the darkness that made the tiny room seem much bigger than it was.

"No," came the reply. Then the side of his mattress dipped and a warm body curled around him. He turned to face Natasha and took her in his arms, her body tucked perfectly into his. He lay his cheek against her hair, breathing in her scent, taking comfort in that, and in her solid presence. She was here, smelling of nutmeg and home and very much _alive_. He pressed a kiss against her hairline.

They lay there together in the darkness, breathing bodies nestled against each other's, a tangle of limbs in a too-small bed. In the darkness Tony's senses were filled with nothing but Natasha, like they where the only ones who existed, and for now, at least, that was true. No saving the world business, no SHIELD protocol, no inexplicably hallucination-inducing women. Just him and Natasha, holding each other like they were all that mattered.

The gentle breeze of her contented sigh washed over the bare skin of his neck and jaw, and he shifted so that he could stroke her hair. "Not worried about anyone finding us?" he said, slightly deeper than usual from being completely relaxed.

She shook her head, he felt the movement brush against his skin. "I don't want to hide things anymore," she said without pretense. "They're our family, or as close to one as we can get," she said. "We shouldn't have to hide us, this" – she interlaced her fingers with his and squeezed his hand – "from them." She gave a low chuckle. "And I'm going to have to learn to let them in. Like how I learned to let you…" Tony's heart swelled at that confession. Private Natasha, who hoarded her secrets fiercer than anyone else he knew, had opened up to him and trusted him. "Besides," Natasha added lightly, "They know anyway."

Of course they did, Tony did stay at her bedside for days when she was unconscious. That seemed a lifetime ago now. Nevertheless, Tony tightened his hold on her protectively. "How are you feeling, by the way?"

"Not you, too," she groaned, though there was a hint of amusement through her exasperation. "The med team's fussed over me enough."

"I'm your boyfriend, it's my job to fuss over you," he said, and the earned him a kiss on the underside of his jaw. "Seriously, though," he said, "how are you feeling?"

She sighed. "Physically? Fine. But what she did to my head… I thought that my days of having my head messed with were done."

Heat washed over Tony, gushing from somewhere deep in his gut. Natasha had fought so hard to claim back her mind from all the brainwashing done to her as a kid, and there were still moments, she'd told him in whispered confessions in the safety of their bed, when she struggled with the memories, with trying to separate truth from lies. There was no one in the world who deserved to have their mind kept safe and kept _theirs_ , more than Natasha.

"She was in my head," Tony said, "I don't know how long, but she got to something in me that – I thought I'd put that part of me away."

"Was it a memory?"

"No, it was…" Tony wondered how to explain what he had seen. What _was_ it exactly? Not a literal memory, but one of the demons that haunted him, had haunted him ever since he started on his path to redemption all those years ago. One he thought that becoming Iron Man, and trying to atone for the damage he'd done, had slain. But that witch had found those embers and fanned them into flames again. He might have taken out his hand in warfare, but that didn't mean that he had stopped killing. He killed, maybe even more than ever, in the name of protecting the world. There would always be another Mandarin, another Hydra. How many more would be caught in the cross-fire, collateral damage in that endless struggle? Innocents, teammates… _Natasha_? His breath came out shuddering and Natasha clutched him closer. "She found something that still has power over me. And she made me… question everything again."

Natasha was quiet. Somehow, he got the sense that she understood. Maybe because she saw something similar, too. "Tony," she finally said, her voice soft but resonating with steadfast conviction. "You're a good man. You might not always do the right thing, but you try your damnedest to and you take too much onto your shoulders and… and that's more than anyone could possibly ask of you. And if you get blindsided, well, that's what I'm here for. And the rest of the team. We're here to keep you on the right track."

Not for the first time, Tony was awestruck by her. A rare feeling for Tony Stark, and if Natasha couldn't make him feel that way, well then no one could. He gently ran his hand up her arm, rested it on the curve of her hip, and said with hushed wonder, "You amaze me, Natasha Romanoff." She laughed at that, and her lips met his in the dark. When she was once again settled against his chest he dared to ask, "What happened in yours?"

She was suddenly still. Tense. Her voice was curt and detached. "I died." The memory of her as she had been in his vision – dead and accusing – flashed across Tony's mind and he hugged her tighter. She relaxed a fraction, elaborating, "I was stuck in a memory, in a part of my life I had lived before. Trapped in my own body watching it all happen again."

"How did you break free of it?" he asked in a murmur.

"You." With that single word, ringing with truth and trust, it seemed as though she had stripped off all her masks and armors and disguises and was vulnerable before him. Tony's breath caught in his chest. He cradled her jaw in his hand, reverent, and she leaned into his touch unconsciously. "Something you said to me, long ago," she said, "It reminded me that I'm more than my past."

"You _are_ ," he said vehemently. "We both are, and – and something you said got me out of mine, too."

He could feel her smile against his palm. "That's what we do," she said. "We save each other. From everything else, and from ourselves."

"For the rest of our lives." He didn't know where the words came from, where he found the courage to hint at a commitment. But he said them, and he didn't regret them. And from the way Natasha kissed him in reply, he deducted that she wasn't repulsed by the idea. That was good enough for him now, he decided as he reciprocated the passionate yet languid kiss.

"I love you," he whispered when she pulled away. They saved those words only for times when they meant something, and right now, he figured, was one of those times.

"And I love you," Natasha replied, her voice husky with warmth, and Tony had never felt more content or in love than he did at that moment. So he closed his eyes, and knew that with Natasha, the only person in the world who could understand him or return his love, lying in his arms, he could, maybe, have a dreamless night's sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at these mushy idiots in love ^_^  
> Only one or two more chapters to go, I have a vague idea of how to tie things together but... we'll see how it goes.  
> (Also, check out my other fics!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Picking up the shards](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2576003) by [InnerCinema](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerCinema/pseuds/InnerCinema)




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